Maggie Smith: The Recovering Pessimist

 

PS: This is not Maggie Smith the actor... this is Maggie Smith the poet (I know... I got confused too)

I am going to be honest, I do not read poetry. Nor do I actively look out for poets. So when it came to this project, I did not know what I was going to do. That is when I found Maggie Smith and her poem Good Bones when I knew that I would choose her. 

Good Bones: by Maggie Smith

Life is short, 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. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children. 

For every bird there's a stone thrown at a bird. 

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, 

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world 

is at least half terrible, and for every kind 

stranger, there is one who would break you, 

though I keep this from my children. I am trying 

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, 

walking you through a real s**thole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful. 

Once I read this poem I knew what poet I was going to pick. Maggie Smith's mastery of repetition is found in many of her poems but specifically in Good Bones. This repetition pushes through most of her work and allows the focus of her poems to be grounded towards a specific constant that always stays the same throughout time. 

In an interview, Maggie explained that she considered herself "a recovering pessimist" trying to find the good in what appears to be distant. This same pessimistic attitude is obvious throughout the majority of the piece, continuing until the last two lines shift and reflect the optimistic tone that's extremely unique.  

Maggie Smith also seems to shift from looking at the world objectively to subjectively throughout the piece, explaining that like "any decent realtor", she will start to look at the world subjectively, seeing what could become of the world, not what has already transpired.  

I feel like Smith really encapsulates what the life of being a parent in an apparently scary world is like. When Smith addresses the concerns that she has with the world and what dangers that could pose to her children,  she explains the importance of not giving up on what you are given and having hope for the future. I feel that the message of this poem is needed more than ever given our political climate combined with the COVID-19 crisis. There is so much to that needs improvement, and future generations need to understand that there is still a reason to help each other.