Here's an edited version of what I wrote five years ago, when I first read Smith's poetry:Smith's 2011 collection of poems won the Pulitzer Prize. I failed to notice this until I recently saw her memoir, Ordinary Light, hanging around the Library.
There are beautiful poems, (really great poems) like "Sci-Fi," "Ransom," and "Challenger," that explore the world, and the larger universe as we imagine it might be. Smith has a great villanelle (or maybe a semi-villanelle, I'm not sure), "Solstice" and it is another example of the author's greatness, as it's ostensibly about JFK airport, but also explores the terror inherent in the lives we're living. "our time is brief, we dwindle by the day."
Strikingly, there are more David Bowie references than I expect from prize-winning poetry. I checked out four of Bowie's CDs after reading these, so I could re-acquaint myself with the source material and get more from Smith's excellent poems.
Let me just add, several hours after I posted this that I believe Smith is the best poet alive. Cool.
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