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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
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.
"Maggie Smith's luminous fifth poetry collection, A Suit or a Suitcase, considers mortality, motherhood, and the layers of the self with her signature humor, wit, and keen eye for detail. With crisp, lyrical observations and striking images, Smith muses on what it means to be a self, how a self may evolve over time, and the odd, potent power of the human mind to both contain and transcend the limits of experience. Wry and poignant, A Suit or a Suitcase is a thoughtful companion for anyone trying to pay attention to the self, the world (physical and invisible), and the constant surprises of memory and love." —Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"An accessible and fullhearted collection." —Booklist
"These poems help me live. A Suit or a Suitcase explore intricate metaphysical subjects, the nature and interrelationships between the body, the mind, the soul, the self, mortality, and time, with a broad, companionable generosity. Her questions shed sparks, yet her lines, her images, are purposeful; they aspire to clarify rather than obfuscate. These poems share the fruits of a difficult aloneness, and the work of a polished mind and an endlessly revised self that has learned to endure mystery, even while lugging around 'the whole shebang' of her life, even while staying home, staying put. Smith's is a poetry of grace." —Diane Seuss, Pulitzer Prize winning author of frank: sonnets and Modern Poetry
"I love Maggie Smith's poems. She is immensely generous to all readers. She gives us her sometimes dark, often hilarious, always questioning, always familiar awareness of the strangeness of the everyday. She shares her insights, her pain, her humility, her intense love of people and the world. To read her poems is to become more aware, more sensitive, more loving, more present, more alive." —Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams and Story of a Poem
This information about A Suit or a Suitcase was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of nine books of poetry and prose, including A Suit or a Suitcase, Dear Writer, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received a Pushcart Prize, and numerous grants and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can find her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.
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