Mars is getting good PR these days. Evidence of water has been confirmed by NASA. The Martian movie is a big hit. The Mars One TV reality show has been making news.
The literary magazine Ploughshares recently published a piece about the British poetry movement Martianism, the "playful blend of metaphor and misapprehension, employed to bring the familiar into sharp relief…invoking the ordinary with an otherworldly air."
"Martianism rejected [the] austere interpretation of both life beyond and lived reality, drawing instead on the traditions of surrealism and Anglo-Saxon riddles to approach the unknown as an invitation for possibility."
British poets involved in the movement included Craig Raine, Christopher Reid, and David Sweetman.
Many of the new Mars projects are delving deeper into science fiction themes, exploring "wit and spirit" as The Martian movie suggests.
For more discussion on the emotional aspects of Mars exploration, check out Why Photographers Commit Suicide, poems about manifest destiny as it has continued, in our own reality, beyond the continents of Earth. Much of the material, based on Michael Collins' 1990 Mission to Mars, moves farther into areas of loneliness, relentless advertising and broadcasting, human legacy, and life without our non-human relatives.
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