Dear Writer by Maggie Smith

Sep 30

Maggie Smith’s Substack intro says, “Not the dame, the other one. NYT bestselling author of poetry & prose. Teacher & editor.” In 2017, when Meryl Streep said she was going to read a poem by Maggie Smith and heard the audience reaction, she said, “Not that one, the American.” You may have heard her poem, “Good Bones” (below), which went viral.

I read Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, lately, and loved it. I kept seeing references to this book subtitled “Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life,” and decided to check it out. I love it, too! Not a writer or aspiring to be one? In the introduction, Smith says, “I’ve found that anything that applies to writing also applies to life.” (Page xvi) I found much that applies to life, and I really appreciated all her “pep talks and practical advice” for writers. I don’t go around saying I’m a writer, and don’t feel qualified to do so, but I like to write and I like to learn about writing.

One piece of advice Smith quotes is from Rae Armantrout, and it definitely applies to life as well as writers, “My best advice is the advice they give kids at a crosswalk: stop, look, and listen.” (page 3) It reminds me of what Mary Oliver said in her poem, “Instructions for Life”:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

The book is a course on writing. I know not everyone would be at all interested in that, but I love learning about the different elements of writing, the lists of things such as the types of imagery (visual, auditory, gustatory—ever heard of that one? I had not. It describes what you can taste—and others); and the various kinds of poetic writing (such as alliteration, consonance, and assonance); types of stanzas (such as couplet, tercet, quatrain). Every endeavor has its “jargon” and technical terms. I remember being surprised by all the jargon used in the office furniture business where I spent the main part of my career (I was in IT, so I only learned a small bit by osmosis.) I like learning some of the technical terms in writing. I like recognizing them when I come across them, or becoming more familiar with them when others discuss them. Even though it’s a book where you learn—including lists of references, examples, and sometimes suggestions of exercises to try at the end of each section—it does not read like a textbook. Smith is personable and engaging. She tells anecdotes and includes several of her own poems to demonstrate the terms.

Each section has chapters around a virtue or characteristic needed by a writer:

- Attention
- Wonder
- Vision
- Surprise
- Play
- Vulnerability
- Restlessness
- Connection
- Tenacity
- Hope

As I have been reading more poetry, I realized that noticing the title is super important. I tended to skim and ignore the titles, but often the title is like a first line, or a description of what the writer is saying, or information that gives you a perspective on what you will be reading. An example (one of Maggie Smith’s poems, page 60):

At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something
My Daughter Said About Trees
When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like
finally, and rushes in.
Even when you trim a tree,
the sky fills in before the branch
hits the ground. It colors the space blue
because now it can.

Don’t you love it?

Smith talks a lot about line breaks, and the way endings might rhyme, or not rhyme, break mid-sentence, free verse versus fitting within a poetic form—or sometimes sort of fitting but not quite. She talks about using white space, too, which made me remember working on the creation of a website with a Google employee who rhapsodically waxed on about white space. Here’s an example Smith used to write about her line ending choices. (This is one of my favorites.)

Bride
How long have I been wed
to myself? Calling myself
darling, dressing for my own
pleasure, each morning
choosing perfume to turn
me on. How long have I been
alone in this house but not
alone? Married less
to the man than to the woman
silvering with the mirror.
I know the kind of wife
I need and I become her:
the one who will leave
this earth at the same instant
I do. I am my own bride,
lifting the veil to see
my face. Darling, I say,
I have waited for you all my life.

The book is great. My ambitious goal is to purchase it (I checked it out from the library) and try to do the exercises and look up the references. I think I would love it and learn a lot. Now I need to self-discipline to actually do it. Even if you don’t read this book, I hope you’ll remember the name—the American one—Maggie Smith, and read her poetry when you come across it.

Here’s the viral one.

Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

bookspoetry

Mavis Moon

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith

No choice.