And I think there is an intricate relationship between the two poles of that tension, a relationship that is difficult to articulate without figurative language, which Good Bones really speaks to as a whole. The collection resonated with me almost the way a long lyric essay would, building an argument about that relationship in song.
Because isn’t “everything is awful” less interesting, and also less accurate, than “so much is awful and so much is beautiful”? I can’t think of a poem I’ve written that struck me as too optimistic, but I do sometimes feel the need to allow light in to an especially dark poem not light to solve the poem’s problem or to somehow rescue the poem from its own mindset, but to add complexity. Hope “wins” in that we keep going, we keep finding beauty to pull us along, we keep seeing-in the world and in each other-things that sustain us. Neither one triumphs in the sense that the other is eradicated. They can muffle each other a bit, but they both continue to exist.
Maggie smith file time and again full#
MS: For me, the book is full of the tension between light and dark, hope and despair. MM: Could you talk about how consciously you had to work to achieve the sense of equilibrium, or balance, between the positive and negative poles of this complex in the collection? It speaks to me as a metaphor for living: we are all learning as we go, and we need to keep trying and be patient. With practice, the notes come, and the beauty and complexity we seek in music. The rain in the last poem is likened to a broken piano, with its endless plinking that can hardly be considered music unless-unless!-we consider it a “beginner’s song.” If we remember what it was like to first learn an instrument, or to hear someone learning, then we remember that the what is at first off-key and unpleasant slowly becomes melodic. Maggie Smith: Yes, the book ends on a hopeful note, which was important to me, but I don’t see it as a grand, “it will all be okay” gesture. Could you talk about how you arrived at this idea? This idea is a complex emotional concept, and the book as a whole serves as a meditation on it.
The book ends with a prayer, an invocation of sorts, for the speaker to be able to “listen to the rain…” and hear the promise of what the world could become. And yet in this collection, as in life, the world consistently gets in the way, forcing the parent to help the child compile “a long list/ of disappointments.” In this collection, “there is no such thing as safety-/only survival and the absence/of survival,” but there is still a “soft,/ bewitching world inside the world.” As a parent, I found these poems spoke to me very directly the desire of any parent to help their child experience joy, despite the great sorrows of existence, is keenly felt. Throughout the book, the speaker articulates the difficulty she has as a parent in “trying to love the world,” the need the speaker feels to “sell the world” to her children despite its obvious flaws. Let’s talk first about your most recent collection, Good Bones. Mary McMyne: It’s such a pleasure to have this opportunity to chat with you about your work.
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