You Could Make This Place Beautiful

<p><b>Maggie Smith </b>is the award-winning author of <i>You Could Make This Place Beautiful </i><i>My Thoughts Have Wings </i><i>Good Bones The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison Lamp of the Body </i>and the national bestsellers <i>Goldenrod </i>and <i>Keep Moving: Notes on Loss Creativity and Change</i>. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council two Academy of American Poets Prizes a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published appearing in the<i> New York Times New Yorker Paris Review Best American Poetry</i> and more.<br><br>@MaggieSmithPoet | maggiesmithpoet.com</p> <p>In her long-awaited debut memoir award-winning poet Maggie Smith explores in lyrical vignettes the end of her marriage and the beginning of a surprising new life. It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children and a woman's love and regard for herself.<br><br>Above all this memoir is an argument for possibility. Smith reveals how in the aftermath of loss we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.</p> <b>Award-winning poet and author Maggie Smith offers a lush heartrending memoir exploring coming of age in your middle age - an instant </b><b><i>New York Times </i>bestseller</b> This book is extraordinary A composite of creativity motherhood and determination Rich in nuance and unrelenting in its honesty Smith's memoir is a bittersweet study in both grief and joy Reminds you that you can [ . . . ] survive deep loss sink into life's deep beauty and constantly constantly make yourself new A poet's memoir . . . [Smith] has an uncanny ability to boil down giant ideas into tiny dense sentences that are both playful and heartbreaking Smith turns to prose to chronicle the end of her marriage and the hard beautiful work of loving and valuing herself In this lightning bolt of a debut memoir Maggie Smith gives us the truth of healing in form as much as story: getting through is no pretty linear narrative. It's one chapter forward and five chapters back. <i>You Could Make This Place Beautiful</i> gave me back a part of myself I thought was gone for good: the knowledge that beauty isn't something out there to find. It's in us <i>You Could Make This Place Beautiful </i>is a sparklingly brilliant memoir-in-vignettes that only Maggie Smith could write. Yet this is a book for everyone - who among us has never had our world upended by the loss of a relationship? Maggie Smith's powerful mastery of language and amazing ability to portray life in all its rich messiness is on full display in this bold brutally candid and yes beautiful book A beautiful book . . . stunning Beautifully written . . . Smith should be just as celebrated for her prose