There are certainly some fine poems here - 'When Your Small Form Tumbled Into Me' is a gorgeous and ecstatic sonnet - but after the intensity and focus of the opening sequences, some of these poems feel like also-rans. Life on Mars concludes with another group of poems on miscellaneous subjects, but here the concerns are more lighthearted, personal and domestic. Smith’s desire to write about injustice is commendable, but her approach can be haphazard.
The end of Life on Mars is less successful than the beginning. Smith’s pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the book’s first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant. Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we’re alone in the universe it’s to accept - or at least endure - the universe’s mystery.
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