Maggie Smith talks new memoir and reclaiming 'Good Bones'
Poet Maggie Smith grew up in Westerville and now lives in Bexley with her two kids.
In 2016, she published the poem “Good Bones,” which went on to become a viral sensation, and the next year, a book of poetry with the same title.
In 2020, she published the bestselling book “Keep Moving,” a collection of short essays and even shorter meditations, many originally tweets, that she wrote during a period when she was recovering from the breakdown of her marriage. The next year, she released the poetry collection “Goldenrod.”
Smith's latest book is “You Could Make This Place Beautiful,” with a title derived from the last line of “Good Bones.” It's a memoir constructed of short pieces, particularly about her marriage and its aftermath, leavened with quotes from other authors, reflections on her reasons for writing, thoughts about how she might transform her experience into a novel or a play, and sections titled “Some People Ask,” centering on questions people ask about her life, and the relatively uncensored answers she gives in her mind and the more discreet answers she actually gives.
Smith will be in conversation with poet Saeed Jones in an event sponsored by Gramercy Books at the Drexel Theatre on Monday. The Dispatch asked the poet about her memoir, upcoming children's book and reclamation of her viral poem "Good Bones."
Local poets: Columbus mourns poetry and theater giant Charles ‘Is Said’ Lyons
Question: Tell me about the epigraph for the book, the Emily Dickinson line: “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” It's a line that recurs a number of times in the book. What struck you about that line?
Maggie Smith: It's funny, somebody asked me recently, "Why did you write this book?" And I think the epigraph is the answer to that question. Writing this book has really been about trying to find my way home to myself. And of course, I like patterns. I'm a poet, first and foremost. So I love the idea of using something in multiple ways in the course of a piece of writing, as a sort of breadcrumb trail for the reader.
Q. The patterns in the book are really striking. How would you describe the structure of the book?
Smith: I approached this book the way I approached writing anything, even just a single poem. The years that I'm writing about, and some of the difficult experiences, aren't best described in a linear way. I knew that I would want a linear throughline that would serve as the spine of the book, because I didn't want to confuse the reader. But then I approached it like a poet. I knew I would want to have these small bits and that some of them would recur. I think of them as strands. The process of putting it together required printing the whole thing out and borrowing some of my children's markers and color-coding what I identified as the strands: Quotes from other writers were a strand, and the forward narrative was a strand, and the questions are a strand. It was a craft project!
Q. I love the “some people ask” sections. Why was that an important part of the memoir for you?
Smith: I think that was me trying to head certain questions off at the pass. The same thing with the sections where I break the fourth wall. I know I'm telling you this, and I know your next question is going to be this. You're going to want to know this detail, and I'm not going to give it to you. I wanted to be honest, but I needed to have boundaries on the page as well as in my life. Those question sections anticipate some of the questions the reader might have, and (I dealt) with them in the book, instead of waiting for the publication of the book.
Q. What do you think of as your relationship with the reader in this book?
Smith: I'm talking to the reader in this book. I don't really do that in any other book. I wanted to show up as myself. There are so many different formal devices in poetry that we can use to keep ourselves out of it. In memoir, I felt very exposed without those devices. I respect the reader and the reader's intelligence enough that I didn't want there to be some sort of elephant in the room where I was telling part of the story and pretending that you don't want to know more. You respect my privacy, and I respect your curiosity, and we just respect each other enough to see that there are some things we're not going to share with each other.
Q. Do you think you will write a memoir again?
Smith: I think I'll always write essays, but I don't have any plans to write anything non-fiction book-length at this point. The extreme vulnerability of this book made me think, maybe a novel? The next book that I have coming out is a picture book. I like thinking about the skill set we have as writers as being portable. If you can write beautiful sentences in one genre, you can pack that up and carry it with you to a different kind of writing.
Columbus poets: Writers’ Block Poetry Night to end after 24 years of antics, art
Q. Can you talk about the children's book?
Smith: It's called “My Thoughts Have Wings.” It will be out in winter 2024. It's basically a bedtime story about quelling nighttime anxieties and filling yourself up with good thoughts. It's been a hard few years for kids.
Q. How did you decide on the title of this book?
Smith: I knew fairly early on that I wanted the book to be called this. I played around with a couple of different options. I landed here partly because I have a pretty ambivalent relationship with “Good Bones,” the poem, both because it tends to go viral again and again when bad things happen, and also because the popularity of that poem complicated things in my marriage. So, for me, the title felt like reclaiming that poem for my purposes. And maybe people who read this book and don't know the poem will come to the poem from a different place. I like the idea of letting that poem have a life outside of tragedy.
At a glance
Maggie Smith will appear at 7 p.m. Monday at the Drexel Theatre, 2254 E. Main St. for a conversation with Saaed Jones, a Q&A and a book signing. Tickets are $30, which includes a copy of “You Could Make This Place Beautiful.” (gramercybooksbexley.com)
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Maggie Smith releases memoir “You Could Make This Place Beautiful"
