What do you think makes "Good Bones" so everlasting? This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.ĬHOW: I love that poem so much, especially the line, I'm trying to sell them the world. Any decent Realtor walking you through a real -hole chirps on about good bones. And for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and the world is at least half terrible. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. For every bird, there is a stone thrown at a bird. The world is at least 50% terrible, and that's a conservative estimate, 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.
SMITH: (Reading) Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Could you read "Good Bones" for LIFE KIT listeners? You know, it was hope in this compact, hundred-and-something words. And your poem "Good Bones," it circulated the Internet, and it felt like such a beacon. The more I told myself it was going to be OK and the more I put myself into that mindset as a daily practice, I saw a difference.ĬHOW: In this episode of LIFE KIT, a conversation with Maggie Smith about how to try on our own hope and keep going in hard times.ĬHOW: Maggie, I first became familiar with your work in 2016, shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting. And it just feels so unnatural to try to feel better and to talk ourselves into feeling better. And sometimes we just kind of want to luxuriate in how bad we feel. And I hated it, and I couldn't wait to take it off because I just felt bad. SMITH: Even though it didn't fit well - like, it was scratchy and oversized. She says it was her way of trying on hope. And then, unbeknownst to me, it was published during a year where I think we're all sort of wandering in the dark, feeling along the wall for the light switch (laughter) and needing to draw on those best parts of ourselves, you know, our resilience and courage, in order to get from Day 1 to Day 2 to Day 3.ĬHOW: In "Keep Moving," Smith compiled a series of essays along with a collection of motivational phrases, or notes to self as she's called them. MAGGIE SMITH: I wrote "Keep Moving" during my darkest, sort of most unsure time. How do we form hope, and how do we hold on to it? How do we keep moving?ĬHOW: I posed this to the poet Maggie Smith, whose new book asks just these questions.
Most of us have seen our daily routines drastically altered, and this might, in some ways, make our own lives seem stagnant. So much is happening in the world, our country right now. CHOW: I've been thinking a lot about what it means to live through this pandemic.
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