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A review by jdscott50
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
The award-winning poet of Goldenrod returns with a memoir of her divorce. Told in lyrical snippets, she gives flashes of her life from when she met her husband to her deteriorating marriage. She makes herself anew with a spirit that could guide anyone.
One evening, Maggie walks downstairs and finds a postcard from her husband to another woman. She reimagines this scene, confronting him. not confronting him, and the eventual destruction of her marriage. She then takes us through every painful step of her divorce. She remembers her marriage and feeling stifled and the coldness of her husband. After the divorce, he moved 500 miles away from her and their children. How do you build back a life after that?
She finds inspiration in herself, and she calls upon the power of her own poetry, Good Bones, the poem that put her on the maps as a poet and speaks to the hardship of this world. It looks at the world like a realtor. There may be bad things, but there are good bones; you could make this place beautiful.
Favorite Passage:
One evening, Maggie walks downstairs and finds a postcard from her husband to another woman. She reimagines this scene, confronting him. not confronting him, and the eventual destruction of her marriage. She then takes us through every painful step of her divorce. She remembers her marriage and feeling stifled and the coldness of her husband. After the divorce, he moved 500 miles away from her and their children. How do you build back a life after that?
She finds inspiration in herself, and she calls upon the power of her own poetry, Good Bones, the poem that put her on the maps as a poet and speaks to the hardship of this world. It looks at the world like a realtor. There may be bad things, but there are good bones; you could make this place beautiful.
Favorite Passage:
Good Bones
BY MAGGIE SMITH
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.