When poet Maggie Smith's marriage fell apart unexpectedly, she began writing "notes to self": brief meditations on dealing with times of intense turmoil and darkness. Each one contained a kernel of advice: "Let the hard days be hard." "Tell yourself kinder truths." "Believe there is peace up ahead.... Even if you can't see it yet." She began posting them on Twitter, ending each note with "Keep moving." In her wise luminous sixth book, Keep Moving, Smith (Good Bones) combines some of those notes with longer essays about dealing with grief, upended expectations and the surprising new spaces created by upheaval.
Smith brings her poet's sensibility to loss, asking questions about the gifts of darkness, delighting in words and concepts with multiple layers. (Revision, a favorite writing practice, also becomes "re-envision," a chance to change one's outlook.) She draws in stories from when her children were small, trying to help them make sense of this confusing world and its transient, heartbreaking beauty. Smith's daughter offers the idea that the sky fills in the space when a tree is cut down, expanding into its new possibilities. As she walks through the aftermath of divorce, Smith also learns to stretch out, filling in her new, unfamiliar space. Her essays trace her journey from darkness to layered light, and her nudges to readers offer wise companionship for their own difficult journeys. "Fill yourself to the skin," she says. "Let yourself be changed, and trust that change is not erasure. Keep moving." --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams