Maggie Smith, GOLDENROD: Poems
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[0:41]Maggie Smith is the author of Golden Rod Poems.
[0:44]Maggie is the award-winning author also of Good Bones, the well speaks of its own poison,
[0:49]Lamp of the Body, and the National Bestseller Keep Moving, notes on loss, creativity, and change.
[0:54]A 2011 recipient of Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
[0:59]Smith has also received several individual excellence awards from the Ohio Arts Council,
[1:04]to Academy of American Poets prizes, a push-cut prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation,
[1:10]and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
[1:12]She has been widely published, appearing in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Best American Poetry,
[1:18]and more, I absolutely loved this podcast.
[1:21]Welcome, Maggie.
[1:22]Thanks so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:25]Oh, thanks for having me.
[1:26]This is great.
[1:27]I loved Golden Rod.
[1:28]I feel like it's like a memoir in poems.
[1:31]Like, I learned so much about you, but I had to keep digging and guessing and figuring it all out.
[1:37]Like, you left these little crumbs to figure out your life.
[1:40]Yeah, I mean, you just got to go through it together.
[1:43]It was very cool the way you did it.
[1:45]I don't know.
[1:46]I loved it.
[1:47]So I love that.
[1:48]I mean, I think sometimes as metaphor is sort of like an imageistic shorthand that says,
[1:54]in a concise kind of tight space kind of gestures toward bigger things.
[2:00]So that I love the idea of this being a sort of memoir in verse because it does, it does address a lot of things going on in my,
[2:08]in my life and in our lives, but just in more concise pieces.
[2:13]It seems very efficient.
[2:15]It's like the ultimate moms.
[2:17]Like, why waste the time with the whole story?
[2:20]I'm going to tell you about my son in like eight lines.
[2:23]And I'm going to tell you about my marriage.
[2:26]And, you know, it's amazing.
[2:28]Yeah.
[2:29]Pretty poetry is actually a great genre for moms.
[2:34]Don't have a ton of time.
[2:36]You know, I really, I mean, you know, the poet Lucille Clifton used to talk about that.
[2:39]Like, you know, you can be making dinner, stirring the soup, getting something ready,
[2:44]in the soccer jersey from the washer and the dryer.
[2:46]And if one little idea comes to you, you write it down.
[2:48]And then another little idea comes to you write it down.
[2:51]And, and so it's, it's worked for me.
[2:53]You know, I started writing homes before I was a mom, but it's,
[2:56]it's been something that's been probably easier for me to keep up and say novel writing because I can dip in and out both as a reader and as a writer
[3:06]and not feel like I have to remember where I was or where the characters are.
[3:10]Or what have I explained, you know, that kind of thing.
[3:13]Yeah.
[3:14]I feel like full length can be very unwieldy.
[3:17]Right.
[3:18]It's like, it's just so much.
[3:19]You can't like hold it all.
[3:20]I don't know.
[3:21]Yeah.
[3:22]I've been trying to edit this memoir.
[3:23]And I'm like, this is so hard.
[3:25]How do I remember it?
[3:27]Anyway, it's harder than an essay, which I much prefer to write.
[3:32]So, but I wanted to maybe read one or two of these if you don't mind.
[3:35]If that's okay.
[3:36]Yeah.
[3:37]Particularly December 18th, 2008 or just some, some of these just like caught my attention.
[3:42]I'm going to read two if that's okay.
[3:44]So, okay.
[3:45]For just a fraction of a moment that afternoon, if we think of time as being a whole, you were the newest person in the world.
[3:52]You were the emptiest vessel on earth knowing nothing of this place or of yourself that you even were that you even were a self.
[3:59]That a self was something one could be that one could be at all.
[4:02]And what was being for that narrowest sliver of a whole, you were the least experienced person on earth.
[4:08]And then you weren't.
[4:09]So, for me, before you knew your own body, what to do with your hands, your pink fist, bettering your face.
[4:14]We swaddle you as if against that confusion.
[4:17]Though I tell you that confusion never leaves.
[4:19]The body remains a house unaware of its rooms.
[4:23]That is so good.
[4:25]I just love that.
[4:27]I mean, the body remains a house unaware of its rooms.
[4:31]I don't know.
[4:32]It's so good.
[4:33]Tell me about this, tell me about writing this film.
[4:35]But the title is my daughter's birthday, my firstborn's birthday.
[4:39]And I actually wrote this poem in a hotel room and it came out and more or less sort of one fell swoop, which is not usually how poems happen for me.
[4:48]A few happen quickly.
[4:49]Most of them happen in tiny little fits and starts kind of accruing over a long period of time after lots and lots of revision and various versions.
[4:59]I was thinking about what it means to be a newborn.
[5:04]And sort of like that moment that you're born, you're the newest person.
[5:09]And what does that mean?
[5:11]And how do you figure out what it is to be a human being?
[5:14]And then just thinking a little bit about what we have to do for babies because they don't even know their own boundaries or edges yet.
[5:22]Collecting their tiny fingernails so they don't scratch their faces and putting socks over their little fists and swaddling them so they don't wake themselves up by punching themselves in the face, which they tend to do.
[5:35]And just thinking actually that sense of not knowing one's self and one's life and one's edges and one's boundaries in a way never really goes away.
[5:46]I mean, we may not scratch our faces or or bump ourselves awake in the middle of the night, but there are still so many things I don't understand about myself and my life.
[5:58]And that confusion is not something one can swaddle oneself against. And so thinking of that as the kind of bigger metaphor in the poem.
[6:07]Oh my gosh, I love it. Maybe the human, the weighted blanket as adult swaddler.
[6:14]Yeah, actually sometimes I call my son my weighted blanket because at nine he's still a snugler and still really wants to kind of drape himself over me when we're watching TV or whatever.
[6:24]And so I joke with him like you are like a you're like my heating pad slash warming, you know, weighted blanket it's perfect actually just don't go anywhere.
[6:35]But you also here let me read this one poem beginning with a line from Basho or did I say that right.
[6:40]The moon is brighter since the barn burned and by burned I mean to the bones the rafters on the ground of a whale's rib cage.
[6:47]A barn is mostly kindling no wonder went up like that whoosh, or should I question my perception as the therapist tells me look for evidence to support the feeling.
[6:56]And it beams the next smoke didn't my husband say hardly to me at all it was a long time coming in this still smoldering field I am looking for evidence.
[7:05]How can something stand for years and then just like that where the roof was all this night.
[7:13]I know all we can do is look at each other and sigh.
[7:17]It's a hard one honestly it's it's somebody shared this poem around the time goldenrod was first published someone shared this poem on Twitter and I.
[7:26]I read it again and I thought wow I actually don't remember writing this poem it's one of those poems that I can't tell you where I was sitting I don't know exactly how it happened.
[7:37]I talked out the the writing of that particular poem and and maybe that's not that strange considering how raw some of the emotions in that in that poem are but really the metaphor for me is.
[7:52]I think that comes up and keep moving to actually is the idea that when something burns down or is destroyed there's something destructive there obviously but there's also a space that's created where something new can be built or or something new can be seen.
[8:08]I thought about that when my marriage ended like I had the shelter of this thing for you know almost 19 years of my life my entire adult life I had the shelter of this thing and when it burned down it was terrifying.
[8:24]But look at the sky like without the beams without the roof without the walls.
[8:31]I was in the open and it was scary and I was sort of exposed to the elements in ways I hadn't been since I was a kid and really ever you know I lived with my parents before I lived with my then husband and so.
[8:45]But look at the view like what can I see now that I couldn't see before what is possible now that wasn't possible before what can I build in this sort of like charred.
[9:00]It's an imprint of what used to be there it's up to me now it's not a group project like I get to decide and so trying trying really in that book and in this one I think to kind of reframe things for myself.
[9:15]You know which is not to deny that something hard happened or try to snap into positive thinking right away but to like sit with the feeling.
[9:26]But what else like yes and it's also maybe this thing like there are all these stars that I didn't get to look at because I had the shelter.
[9:37]I love that that's like the ultimate sort of optimist right like that something from something terrible can come something so amazing.
[9:47]I was like how's it going.
[9:49]No it's funny I mean I think keep moving on the I'm a recovering pessimist and I think I was a pessimist most of my life but in a self protective way you know like when you think it's not going to go well.
[10:00]but you're really saying that to protect yourself
[10:02]in case it doesn't go well
[10:04]because you don't want to get your hopes up.
[10:06]And I think I am putting that aside
[10:09]because honestly, when things really, really go wrong,
[10:13]you need optimism in a way that you don't.
[10:16]When things are going pretty well
[10:17]and you can kind of be self-protectively pessimistic.
[10:20]Yeah, self-protective pessimism doesn't protect you
[10:23]when you're already at the bottom of the well.
[10:25]Like you need something to help you climb out of it.
[10:29]And so starting to think about the things that could go right
[10:32]instead of only the things that could go wrong
[10:35]has been serving me pretty well for the past two or three years.
[10:39]Well, I feel like the self-protective pessimism
[10:42]is just another way of saying anxiety.
[10:45]I mean, right, it's so basically that.
[10:47]It's like, I feel like if I worry about something enough
[10:50]then I don't have to really worry about it anymore.
[10:53]Like if only by actively worrying,
[10:56]do I take the risk out of flying or something?
[10:59]But if I forget to worry, you know, then listen.
[11:02]Yeah, and it's so funny because we worry and worry and worry
[11:05]and then if the thing actually happens and it goes wrong,
[11:08]we get to pat ourselves in the back
[11:10]because we were so smart and right and we saw that coming.
[11:13]And so we almost feel sort of like, see, I knew it.
[11:17]Right.
[11:18]And that's, I mean, that's a weird space to be in too,
[11:21]but I agree.
[11:22]It's all anxious sort of, you know,
[11:25]magical thinking around problems where really
[11:29]if we sort of loosened our grip a little bit
[11:32]and thought about the possibility
[11:33]that maybe the worst won't happen
[11:34]because nine times out of 10, it doesn't.
[11:38]Right.
[11:38]It's just that one time.
[11:40]And even for the most anxious people, you know, like,
[11:44]keep moving.
[11:45]I mean, you just keep, you have no choice
[11:47]when the worst happens.
[11:48]You have no choice.
[11:49]You figure out a way just like,
[11:53]and then you realize all that time
[11:54]it's not worrying it's total waste.
[11:55]It's just like cluttering your brain
[11:57]because when the worst happens, you'll deal with it.
[12:00]Yep.
[12:01]It's like I say this to my kids,
[12:02]like what if I cry in school today?
[12:03]Okay. Well, you'll handle it.
[12:05]Like same with us, right?
[12:06]It's just easier said than done.
[12:09]Easier said than done for sure.
[12:11]Tell me also about your son's fevers.
[12:13]I was so worried about him in the book.
[12:15]What was that about?
[12:16]Was it diagnosed?
[12:17]Like did it go away?
[12:18]No, he just, you know, some kids run high fevers, naturally.
[12:21]So, you know, my daughter, if she was really sick,
[12:24]it would get to 102.
[12:26]Rhett, he was really sick, 105.
[12:29]Which if your first born never got past 102,
[12:32]you think, well, that's a high fever.
[12:35]And so when you have a kid who, you know,
[12:37]you take their temperature and it's 147,
[12:39]it's like, oh, I don't know what to do with this.
[12:43]And now actually nothing,
[12:45]nothing, at least in regards to that, was ever wrong.
[12:48]It was just his body was different from his sisters.
[12:52]And it was scary.
[12:54]And even now, I mean, he just runs a little hotter.
[12:57]He gets a fever, he just feels a little hotter.
[12:59]And so I end up, you know,
[13:00]going and getting the wash clothes and doing the little,
[13:03]again, the little mittens of wash clothes
[13:06]and the little socks of wash gloves.
[13:07]And we just, we just do it.
[13:10]Did you ever see the documentary on HBO?
[13:12]Not a documentary, sorry.
[13:13]Like the limited series called John Adams
[13:15]and HBO based on David McCullough's book.
[13:17]And I watched it like forever ago,
[13:19]but I can't get this one scene out of my head
[13:21]of Abigail Adams with like the wash clothes back in the day,
[13:25]you know, with her children at home,
[13:27]with no record, like nothing else,
[13:29]no tools in the toolbox,
[13:30]just the cloth and the fear and the kids.
[13:33]And every time my kids have a fever,
[13:34]I kind of flash back to that, you know,
[13:36]because it's just like, this is what we do, right?
[13:40]You have to go back to just like cooling off the body
[13:43]of somebody you love, who's struggling.
[13:44]Like there's not really much you can do.
[13:47]No, no.
[13:47]No, it has changes in, but anyway.
[13:49]No, I mean, thank goodness
[13:50]for like the children's title or whatever.
[13:52]Yes, exactly.
[13:52]But I mean, no.
[13:53]It's a biotic, really, it's, you know,
[13:56]three in the morning, it really is like you,
[13:58]your child in a wash cloth and just,
[14:01]and that's, and really, you know,
[14:02]the poem about that in the book is really a poem
[14:06]of sort of having a crisis of faith
[14:07]or a crisis of not having faith
[14:09]that I can lean on in that moment
[14:11]and thinking, goodness, I wish,
[14:13]I wish I were a person of faith in this moment
[14:17]because this wash cloth is not enough.
[14:20]Yeah.
[14:21]I need to feel like something's looking out for me right now.
[14:24]I really need to feel, you know, cared for and tended to
[14:29]in this moment.
[14:30]And I feel that way a lot with my children.
[14:32]Like I would love more of an army of protection for them
[14:36]than I am able to offer on my own.
[14:38]Yes.
[14:39]Yeah, that would be nice.
[14:40]That would be nice.
[14:42]So how many days out of the week do you write poetry?
[14:46]Like is this something that like you do to cope
[14:48]with the everyday or you work on a collection
[14:50]or do you write in other ways
[14:52]or like how often do you turn to that?
[14:54]I don't usually write every day
[14:56]unless I'm on deadline and I'm making myself do it.
[14:59]So, you know, and poems in particular,
[15:02]they come to me in like little bits.
[15:04]So I had a period about a month ago
[15:06]where I think I wrote nine poems in four days,
[15:09]which for me is like six months worth of poems.
[15:11]I don't write that many poems in a short period of time.
[15:15]I haven't written any poem since that.
[15:18]Although this morning, the plumber working on the burst pipe
[15:21]in my basement said something about the pipe
[15:24]that I was like, that's a metaphor.
[15:26]I think I startled him a little bit.
[15:28]I said, oh my gosh, that's a great metaphor.
[15:30]And he just looked at me and I was like, I'm a poet.
[15:32]And it was like sort of laughing.
[15:33]And he was like, okay, I'm like,
[15:34]I've got to write that down.
[15:36]So there might be something that comes
[15:37]from this basement experience.
[15:38]But yeah, not every day.
[15:40]I mean, it's things just sort of,
[15:42]I try to keep my kind of antenna up every day.
[15:45]And I keep my ears and my eyes open.
[15:47]And not everything gets written down right away.
[15:50]You know, sometimes I'll have a conversation
[15:51]with one of my kids or the plumber will say something
[15:54]or I'll see something on a walk.
[15:56]And I might not think to type it into my phone
[15:59]or jot it in a notebook right away.
[16:01]It might just kind of be percolating in my brain
[16:04]until something else maybe happens
[16:06]that seems like it wants to live alongside that thing.
[16:10]And then enough pieces begin to accrue
[16:12]that I feel like I need to sit down and write it down.
[16:16]So yeah, it's sort of a messy process
[16:18]and not really anything.
[16:20]I'm not disciplined in the way that some writers
[16:23]are disciplined and that I sit down at my desk
[16:26]at 5 a.m. every morning and write for an hour.
[16:28]I've never been that kind of writer.
[16:31]Even before I was a parent
[16:33]and even before I was a single parent,
[16:35]I was not that kind of writer.
[16:36]So I'm certainly probably gonna become that
[16:40]that kind of writer now that life is even, you know,
[16:43]more pull in many direction E than it was before.
[16:48]So what do you do then to like cope with big feelings
[16:52]and all the rest during like the average day?
[16:55]Like if you're really upset about something.
[16:57]Yeah, if I'm really upset about something,
[16:59]I will call one of my closest friends or my mom
[17:04]or I will put on my colossally giant headphones
[17:08]and take a long walk or go for a run
[17:12]or jump on my little trampoline
[17:16]or sometimes just take a hot bath
[17:18]and try to take a nap, you know, like unplug
[17:21]in a sort of more literal way,
[17:22]like just really sort of disengage for a period
[17:24]of time if I can.
[17:26]But yeah, writing for me is never,
[17:28]it's not usually something I do in the middle
[17:31]of the big feeling.
[17:33]Like I feel the big feelings.
[17:34]I'm working through that writing is usually something I do
[17:37]when I'm in a sort of reflective headspace
[17:41]or more of a processing thinking headspace
[17:45]than a feeling headspace
[17:47]because especially because I write poems
[17:50]I need to be able to think about form and structure
[17:53]and how to be sort of concise
[17:57]and I'm not in that space when I'm having big feelings.
[18:02]So it's usually I have to take a beat
[18:04]and then a week or two later I might think,
[18:08]oh, that was interesting for these reasons.
[18:11]That might be an essay or,
[18:13]oh, this line or this image won't leave my mind,
[18:16]I need to write this down
[18:17]and see maybe what I can kind of build momentum-wise
[18:20]off of this and maybe it wants to be a poem.
[18:23]And so what do you do with the poem?
[18:26]Like what do you do when you're,
[18:29]you finish writing, like how do you know when it's a collection
[18:32]versus it's just a poem, like what, yeah.
[18:36]Yeah, I mean, when I'm writing a book of poems
[18:39]and not really writing a book of poems,
[18:41]I write a poem at a time and then at a certain point
[18:44]usually two or three years in,
[18:47]I realize it's been two or three years
[18:49]since my last book of poems came out.
[18:51]I wonder how many poems I have in this word document
[18:54]sitting on my, you know, on my laptop
[18:58]and I open the word document called like next book
[19:01]or new poems or something not very organized.
[19:04]And I'll see that there are hundreds of poems inside of it.
[19:08]And then I think, okay, there's probably a book
[19:11]that I can carve out of all of this stuff.
[19:14]And I just go through the process of, you know,
[19:16]with Golden Rod, I printed out every poem I had written
[19:21]since submitting the manuscript of my last book of poems,
[19:26]to my publisher.
[19:28]And so the poems in Golden Rod date back to 2016
[19:34]because that's, you know,
[19:36]when I was handing that last book over
[19:39]and I had like, I don't know, like 150 poems or something
[19:42]which is, you know, I think there are only 50 some
[19:45]in Golden Rod.
[19:46]So I had to go through all of that,
[19:48]pull out the ones I wasn't that excited about,
[19:51]look at the ones that I was kind of excited about
[19:54]and see how they might be in conversation
[19:56]with each other.
[19:57]And then, you know, what do I want the sort of entrance?
[20:00]It's to the collection to be, how do I want to invite the reader in, how do I envision sort of like stepping out of the book, what do I want the exit to be, and then what happens in between.
[20:11]Point A and point B and really is it's such a letite process, it hasn't changed at all since assembling my first book in my 20s, which is I print everything out and I shuffle them together in my hands and I lay them out on the living room floor.
[20:25]And I look at the way poem one might transition into poem two and if I don't like that I find another one and the big stack that I think would be good transition from that one and then I go on to the next and then the next and then the next and so it's it's really just a big shuffling act.
[20:41]Yeah, and what do you do in like what do you do when you're not writing poems in your daily life.
[20:46]Oh gosh all kinds of things other than deal with plumbers what do I do in my daily life so like the average day is wake up.
[20:54]Get my kids up pack their lunches make their breakfast get them to school come back walk my dog and then check email do all of that create you know realize the 15 things I was supposed to be on top of that I'm not send apology emails that try not to say I'm sorry.
[21:13]i'm trying to rephrase i'm sorry for the slow response as thank you for your patience and like that we know what this is like and then it just depends you know if if I have a book review or like an article for the poster something do I might work on that and try to bang out a draft.
[21:30]While my head is clear I might have a podcast to record or an interview I have to do and so I might do that or I might have a meeting with one of my graduate students or I might need to look at a packet of their poems and.
[21:43]Give them feedback it's yeah it's it's sort of a cobbled together life from various writing and mothering related activities I could I could use that description as well that's a great description of life.
[21:58]It is yeah it's a it's a good life and no two days are really ever exactly the same.
[22:04]You know like there's there are like some posts that remain like I'm always getting them up and always packing the lunch I'm always.
[22:11]You know I pick my son up for lunch still because he's unvaccinated so I bring him home during the day for lunch so he doesn't have to be unmasked in school building.
[22:20]So that breaks my day into chunks as well because I've gotten power in the middle of the day where I'm eating a sandwich and playing, who know with a small person and then taking him back to school.
[22:30]And then I have to do school pick up and then I have to make dinner, so the the mothering pieces of my day are the sort of unmovable ones.
[22:38]And then around those beams I'm able to sort of move in different ways and get and get things accomplished.
[22:45]Yes, interesting yeah I'm like well, I know I pick up and drop off and I try to do as much work as I can between nine and three and then who knows.
[22:56]So yes that's the life that's the life of course you end up with all these amazing poetry collection so it's amazing.
[23:03]I mean I tried to I try to be productive but it's you know it takes a long time I mean you know golden rights funny someone was like you you publish keep moving and 2020 and golden rod and 2021 and I said well yes I did but I didn't write them at the same time.
[23:16]I mean golden rod that book took me five or six years to write very slowly over time so the fact that it came out a year after keep moving doesn't mean that I spent the year for doing keeping and golden rod pounding out 54 poems it's just that was the that was the way it happened on the schedule but no I'm not quite that prolific.
[23:40]So what advice would you have for aspiring aspiring poets I would say read as widely as you can read as widely as you can so many people I talk to when they when I say I'm a poet.
[23:54]They're like oh that was the hardest class for me in school or I hated poetry I always felt like it was so confusing I loved writing everything else and poetry was always the hardest thing and I think.
[24:07]You know a lot of us were just taught it poorly or we haven't read widely enough to know really what's out there there are so many living poets writing right now work that is just flat out gorgeous and moving but also accessible and understandable.
[24:24]And not esoteric necessarily you know not something that you feel like you need to go get a PhD to understand what's happening in it so.
[24:35]For people who want to write my first piece of advice is always read more because when until you really know what's being done out there it's hard to start doing it yourself.
[24:45]And I also think it gives it gives people a great great inspiration if i'm ever stuck and I feel like I am not really writing many poems the first thing I want to do is read other people's poems because reading beautiful sentences and and really stunning images or really unexpected descriptions of things always kind of sparks my brain and gets me going in a new direction I find it incredibly inspiring so yeah just.
[25:14]More books that's that's the answer to so many things more books.
[25:21]I love it awesome well Maggie thank you so much thanks for talking about goldenrod I didn't even hold this up keep moving journal which I'm also obsessed with and like couldn't even figure which is so great I mean if I ever was going to sit down and do do a journal this would be the one I like I'm not going to have time to but it's really great and it's a great gift and I feel you.
[25:44]Thank you, no this was a joy you too all right have a great day.
[25:51]Okay bye bye.
[25:55]Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens calm and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week thanks so much to Steve and Ryan
[26:11]at texture sound for the sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.