The Bossy Bookworm
Apr 13, 20232 min
Poet Maggie Smith's memoir traces the end of her marriage, weaving in the history and the future while she acknowledges that any story is only one person's reality and experience.
In You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith recounts her painful, prolonged divorce and her marriage, which was ending as she wrote this memoir.
The book is made up of many short sections, and much of Smith's exploration is focused on the way in which she chooses to write about and present her situation--both of which seem fitting for a writer and poet.
Through tracing the framework of and the growth and change of her relationship, Smith also explores gender roles, womanhood, motherhood, fury, loss, and a new fire for looking out for one's self.
While Smith focuses on aspects such as the increased understanding she gained about the longtime structure of her marriage--the give and take (or lack thereof), the power imbalance, the resentment, the unspoken yearnings--You Could Make This Place Beautiful is not a laying-bare of emotional turmoil, and in a way the writing about it feels like a somewhat dispassionate exercise despite the topic.
Yet her language is beautiful, evocative, and full of pain, resolve, reflection, anger, discovery, and resignation.
Smith deliberately presents the book not as a "tell-all" but a "tell-mine," repeatedly acknowledging that she can only tell her side of the story, built upon facts but only those she chooses to share; built on feelings, but only her feelings; built on resulting repercussions, but only those she chooses to acknowledge and share.
The author mentions much of the music she finds powerful and inspiring or comforting, and she references other poets' work and her own. I found myself noting and saving much of this gorgeousness.
I received a prepublication edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Atria Books.
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