Praise for Goldenrod

“To read Maggie Smith is to embrace the achingly precious beauty of the present moment—a sentiment that is omnipresent in her latest collection of poems, Goldenrod. In this volume, the award-winning poet uses the seemingly familiar objects and happenings of everyday life—an autocorrect mistake, a rock from her young son’s pocket and a field of the titular goldenrods—as conduits for finding the extraordinary in the day-to-day motions of a routine. In doing so, Smith makes the case that nearly every element in our lives can be part of the divine, if we only take the time to look.” —TIME

“Maggie Smith is that rare poet who can inspire you, break your heart, and make you stop astonished at the planet around you—all in the same poem, often in the same moment. Who else can do that? ‘I walk alone in the snow,’ she writes, ‘squinting up into the big, wet flakes, / letting them bathe my face. I tell myself / it is a kind of touch.’ This kind of wisdom is more than hard-earned, it is a gift.” —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic

“Goldenrod is fresh, wise, and necessary. With wonder and poignancy, the speaker navigates a necessary reconstitution of self as she grieves what is lost. This is a lush and intimate collection of poems full of joy and sorrow, fire and field. Maggie Smith’s way of seeing is positively alchemical.” —Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer

“Maggie Smith’s brilliant new book Goldenrod alternates between gratitude and anger, bafflement and forgiveness, but more than anything else, like all Maggie’s work, these poems radiate love. To read Maggie Smith’s poems is to realize that we aren’t alone.” —Rhett Miller, singer/songwriter, Old 97s

“Goldenrod brims with a fervent love for this gorgeous and wounded world. Though Maggie Smith doesn’t turn away from the pain and suffering––from a divorce and a child’s illness to mass shootings and the desecration of the earth––her precise attention and observations pull me in closer to the beauty and the mystery of this life.  These are poems you want to rush into. They are also poems you will find yourself returning to more slowly again and again. These poems are like the stones she describes: together/ they dazzle with fire.” —Ellen Bass, author of Indigo

Praise for Keep Moving

“Keep Moving speaks to you like an encouraging friend reminding you that you can feel and survive deep loss, sink into life’s deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new. Who doesn’t need a friend—and a book—like that?”  —Glennon Doyle

“Every once in a long, long while a book comes along that challenges and changes everything. Keep Moving is exactly that book: an ingenious synthesis of poetry, proverbs, journaling, lyrical prose, belles-lettres, psalms, meditations, and aphorisms. It defies any tidy definition, and thus, practically defines a new genre that gives everyone—no matter what walk of life—the gift of pausing to reflect on what we didn’t know we already knew about ourselves because we never had words for it, until Maggie Smith. These pages give us a unique and poetic opportunity to recognize the joys within our failures, the peace within our terrors, the simplicity within our complex lives—and then some! It is sure to become a classic that will be read for decades to come.”  —Richard Blanco

“In Keep Moving, poet Maggie Smith takes what William James called a ‘torn-to-pieces-hood’ and knits it into something new and surprising and fortifying. I’m so grateful for the clarity, compassion, and wit in these pages. This is a book that will change you, a book you will want to give to someone you love. I’ve never read anything quite like it.”  —Lucy Kalanithi