![]() It was another time, he says, picking up again. A fountain in the neighbor's yard babbles to itself, and the night air Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath, Then lets it go. Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone. Hero, survivor, God's right hand man, I know he sees the blank He asks once, twice, and "The third time / He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white." Their conversation wittily brings together the most inside of filmic and theological jokes with a powerful critique of science fiction: I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back. In one sharp section, she brings up Charlton Heston's role in Soylent Green, imagining him trying to visit her. The particularities of Smith's gaze allow her to transform the kitsch into fantasies bringing her into imaginative concourse with the unreachable-moon rocks, stars, rock stars, movie stars, and-most important for this collection-her dead father. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1984 film Starman, the 1973 film Soylent Green, and others. One of the best poems of the collection, "My God, It's Full of Stars," considers humans' relationship to the universe via Arthur C. Such references, though cultural ephemera, are, under scrutiny, tools for irony, questioning, and critique. The collection revolves around outer space and its kitsch, ranging from references to David Bowie-the title of the book alludes to a song from the 1971 album Hunky Dory-to science-fiction movies from the '60s, '70s, and '80s. She gives us visions to set beside the stunning images we're receiving even now from the surface of Mars. What Smith finds is radiant, grave, and mysterious, reaching through space like the most powerful telescopes-into the past and future. No wonder: her father was one of the engineers of the Hubble telescope. And like the most sensitive of telescopes, Smith looks powerfully and precisely, scattering her collecting array across the globe and the surrounding space. ![]() Smith's Pulitzer Prize-winning volume Life on Mars explores some of the same big questions. They may learn more about how the first stars and galaxies formed, about dark matter and the nature of gravity. It will also be in two times at once, allowing scientists to peer through space into the past. The Square Kilometre Array, named for the size of its collecting area, will be 50 times more sensitive than any present telescope and will be located in both South Africa and Australia. On Thursday, experts chose the site for the largest and most powerful telescope ever built-and it will be in two places at once.
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