American poet Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Prize winning collection Life on Mars (2011) treasures her work of art that revels in cosmology and awareness about human mortality. She combines the realms of the physical and the metaphysical while composing her poems to produce a power-packed imagery of her beliefs. In her poem “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” from the same collection, Smith alludes to the famous English musician David Bowie who gave away his life to lung cancer in 2016. The binaries of life and death and the world of possibilities each bestows is the preoccupation of the poet in the poem. Comparing Bowie to a ‘star’ both literally and metaphorically, she gives him a new light and existence as a figure who still continues to inspire people like her.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Summary and Analysis
The poem is divided into three parts, each section consisting of stanzas with a definite set of lines except the last stanza of the last section. The first two sections comprise of four stanzas each while the third stanzas only has three stanzas. Each line begins with the capitalised first word of the first word. Apart from a few internal rhymes, there is no consistent rhyme pattern and the first person speaker directly addresses the readers to lend them an equal participation in his/her interrogation of the star-studded world.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 1-5
After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span
Hides something elemental.
Not God, exactly. More like
Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman
Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.
And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure
The poem commences with the night-time where the dark sky is a home to the stars which in their lustre and shine appear to be as blocks of ice (Simile). The distance between these twinkling elements and the earth is vast, as if they are attempting to hide away something unique and special from us. The speaker is well aware that it is not God or a figure equally powerful that resides among the stars. To establish the belief in a ground reality, the speaker compares the figure to a more human-like entity like David Bowie, the famous English musician who is well known for his super hit single “Starman,” which the speaker here alludes to, referring to both his song and his persona. The alliteration in the phrase “Bowie-being” is also unmissable. Like his music, he is also an expert in the cosmic space where he tries hard to command our attention right from above.
The poem was written before Bowie’s death, which makes it, today, a more compelling read. Smith praises Bowie for his talents when he’s alive, and now, after he’s no more, the words in the poem echo more powerfully than even in their recognition of his enigmatic spirit.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 6-10
That someone was there, squinting through the dust,
Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on, waiting only
To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then?
Even for a few nights, into that other life where you
And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?
The enjambment paves the way for a possibility about the unknown domains of knowledge that reflect on death and the afterlife. It also points to the hidden element’s morale-boosting efforts to urge us to reclaim what is lost. The speaker sparks curiosity concerning the endlessness of the life of a thing or a person. Death is not just the end but an eternal waiting to come “back badly” (alliteration). The speaker asks the readers if they’ll be willing to return to their past, irrespective of their present.
A hypothetical question comes knocking at the door of the readers, which concerns a scenario of a man- anyone among the readers would ever return to the woman who loved him in the past, happily, despite the bleakness of the future, which is the present.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 11-15
Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen, where my
Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove.
Bowie will never die. Nothing will come to him in his sleep
Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,
Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired
The speaker spins the question towards herself as well to ponder over whether there are any chances of harbouring a wish that involves a return to a house with the parents waiting. The poem suddenly changes its tone by affirming that Bowie will still be alive even if he corporeally ceases to exist anymore. The last line is a continuation of the hypothesis from the previous stanza, addressing the young readers who lose love at a young age, but the youthful spirit of Bowie will be everlasting.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 16-20
And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen
That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like life
In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking, one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.
The woman the speaker refers to is “flush-faced” (alliteration), who is keenly waiting for something. We do not know if it is the same woman from her earlier hypothesis. There is an ambiguity in her reference to the woman. She becomes a subject of comparison to the speaker’s younger self in the dreams and aspirations of touching “the world with bare hands/Even if it burns.” Burning here symbolises the unbearable heat of the celestial bodies as well as the stardom of insanely popular and famous celebrities like Bowie.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 21-23
He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie
For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play
Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours
This section focuses on Bowie’s life as an artist. His comparison to a “cat” (simile) in his swift music and religious figures like the Pope and Christ is an interesting play of words. He can adopt various roles such as “Pope of Pop” and “coy as Christ” to exhibit his unmatchable art, which is “trademarked twice” (alliteration).
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 24-26
Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out
Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.
But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.
Listening to his music leads to losing track of time for his audience, and hours slip by like “water from a window A/C” (simile). Even though his fans get sweaty and grow tired of waiting, he is as energetic as ever.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 27-29
Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives
Before take-off, before we find ourselves
Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?
The speaker raises a thought-provoking question about time and its eternity. The continuous cycle of life-death, including multiple births, when does it come to an end? There is anaphora in the line “Before take-off, below we find ourselves” and alliteration in “glam-glow.”
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 30-32
The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts
For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky
Like migratory souls.
The speaker reflects on Bowie’s desires for something other than his present life. Like him, every human being comes across a feeling of displacement and an ardent urge to find a true place of belonging. The speaker compares this feeling of non-connectedness to the “migratory souls” who are always on the move.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 33-42
Bowie is among us. Right here
In New York City. In a baseball cap
And expensive jeans. Ducking into
A deli. Flashing all those teeth
At the doorman on his way back up.
Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette
As the sky clouds over at dusk.
He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel
The way you’d think he feels.
Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.
The speaker affirms Bowie’s presence as any common man performing quotidian activities such as greeting the doorman on his way up and hailing a taxi on Lafayette Street in New York City’s Lower Manhattan. He is not a gloating or an arrogant personality, as most commoners assume celebrities to be. Instead, he tells jokes and is appealing to everyone.
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 43- 52
I’ve lived here all these years
And never seen him. Like not knowing
A comet is a shooting star.
But I’ll bet he burns bright,
Dragging a tail of white-hot matter
The way some of us track tissue
Back from the toilet stall. He’s got
The whole world under his foot,
And we are small alongside,
Though there are occasions
The speaker expresses her disbelief at never possessing the knowledge about his presence in the city. He/She compares it to “a comet from a shooting star” (metaphor) in his bright and burning aura. The extension of the comet metaphor in its tail also evokes an image of a tissue roll form a toilet stall. (imagery). This juxtaposition of the heavenly with the earthly connects his two sides. However, his magnanimity belittles us in stature towards the sidelines. Multiple alliterations in this stanza include “burns bright,” “track tissue” and “whole world.”
Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes | Analysis, Lines 53-64
When a man his size can meet
Your eyes for just a blip of time
And send a thought like SHINE
SHINE SHINESHINESHINE
Straight to your mind. Bowie,
I want to believe you. Want to feel
Your will like the wind before rain.
The kind everything simply obeys,
Swept up in that hypnotic dance
As if something with the power to do so
Had looked its way and said:
Go ahead.
The enjambment projects occasions when men like Bowie cast their glance at you to ignite new passions. They also make you believe in your ability to “SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE” (repetition). The speaker wishes to feel his spirit like “the wind before rain” (imagery). He is the commander whose “hypnotic dance” is what the speaker craves for and it is a force that can push forward and encourage to “Go Ahead” and achieve great heights in life. The right indentation of the phrase “Go Ahead” in italics marks the first and only words from Bower himself which is both an instruction and motivation.
