Description

Atria/One Signal Publishers, hardcover

Publication Date: July 27, 2021

Publisher Marketing:From the award-winning poet and bestselling author ofKeep MovingandGood Bones, a stunning poetry collection that celebrates the beauty and messiness of life.

With her breakout bestsellerKeep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her “meditations on kindness and hope” (NPR). Now, withGoldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life–a hallway mirror, a rock found in her son’s pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road–she reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone “doesn’t observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting /shana tovatoshaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah torose has hands.”

Slatecalled Smith’s “superpower as a writer” her “ability to find the perfect concrete metaphor for inchoate human emotions and explore it with empathy and honesty.” The poems inGoldenrodcelebrate the contours of daily life, explore and delight in the space between thought and experience, and remind us that we decide what is beautiful.