Instant New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith returns with a new collection of poems on the sometimes-blurry distinction between mind and body, and how the self shifts and moves through time and space.
The title of Maggie Smith’s new collection comes from the eponymous poem:
You ask what I’ll miss about this life. Everything but cruelty, I think.
But you want one specific thing, so here—I’ll miss my body. I’ll miss
its companionship, how it’s traveled with me, never leaving me—& by me,
…Instant New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith returns with a new collection of poems on the sometimes-blurry distinction between mind and body, and how the self shifts and moves through time and space.
The title of Maggie Smith’s new collection comes from the eponymous poem:
You ask what I’ll miss about this life. Everything but cruelty, I think.
But you want one specific thing, so here—I’ll miss my body. I’ll miss
its companionship, how it’s traveled with me, never leaving me—& by me,
I mean my mind. My soul? My self? I don’t know what to call it, and besides,
my body hasn’t traveled with me. I’ve traveled inside it. Do I wear it
or does it carry me? Is the body a suit or a suitcase?
Within, poems turn over the strange relationships between the body and the mind, the self and the world. With her signature tenderness and clarity of observation, and with stunning swoops of imagination, Smith considers—and reconsiders—what it is to be human: Does one life matter in the grand scheme of space and time? How can it be that we are the same people we were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, but also different people? And could there be more to life, just beyond the borders of we can experience?
Each poem is an ode to the power of our minds and proof that both a life and a self, whether within a suit or a suitcase, is infinitely expandable.
Hardcover, 128 Seiten
Veröffentlicht von Washington Square Press.
Like most collected works, there are obvious frontrunners in this group. Some pieces spoke to me while others were intricately crafted but didn't resonate 100%. I loved every poem that touched on the self, our place in this universe, and the lives we could have lived if we'd made different decisions.
