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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I am grateful you are here. On today's show, we'll speak with Lisa Cortés, the director of the documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything. The film was described as enthralling by Variety.

We'll play some music from a new album, reimagining some classic Puerto Rican songs, and talk about it with the host of La Brega, the podcast, Alana Casanova-Burgess. This hour we are going to have a conversation about splitting up. We start with a poet who uses her way with words to take readers through her unexpected divorce. That's our plan, so let's get this started with You Could Make This Place Beautiful.

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Poet Maggie Smith's new memoir contains multitudes. There are, of course, poems, there are chapters that are two lines long, there are thought-provoking quotes, the fourth wall is broken, and there are detailed accounts of important moments, including the instant Smith realized her husband was having an affair. She makes it clear though that this is a curated account of how the small fractures in her relationship widened shortly after a huge success when her poem, Good Bones, went viral in 2016.

Smith writes, "There's no such thing as a tell-all, only a tell-some, a tell-most maybe. This is a tell-mine and the mine keeps changing because I keep changing. The mine is slippery like that." Maggie Smith chronicles her experiences with heartbreak, betrayal, divorce, and rediscovery in her new memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. She'll be speaking tonight at St. Ann's Church in partnership with our friends at Books Are Magic that's happening at 7:00 PM, but first, she joins me in studio. Maggie, welcome.

Maggie Smith: Oh my gosh. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: What is something you know about the process of getting divorced that you just didn't really know or couldn't have understood before?

Maggie Smith: I think one of those things that we don't talk enough about is the-- We talk about splitting up the tangibles. You get divorced and someone gets the couch and someone else gets the chair and someone gets the plates and someone else gets the balls, but who gets the intangibles? Who gets the songs, the private jokes, the memories, the places you're going to drive by and see and get a little twinge because you remember being with that person there? I think we maybe don't talk enough about how it affects not just your thinking about the present and future, but how it affects the way you think back in time.

Alison Stewart: Right, because you go by a place and you think, "Oh, we went there together. Were we in love at that point or were we not in love?

Maggie Smith: How far back?

Alison Stewart: Was this thing happening that I thought was happening, happening during that period, and what does that mean?

Maggie Smith: It's the retracing of steps and how far back do you have to travel to get to a place where it was "okay". Sometimes we don't get the answers to those questions. That's something else I'll say, is we don't always get to have all the answers.

Alison Stewart: Sometimes you think you have the answers. Sometimes you create a narrative around this period in your life. Now that you've written about it, gone back and reread it, read the audiobook, I listened to the audiobook a lot, what was something that you realized in this narrative that you created around this that after you finished this project, you thought, "Maybe that wasn't quite right." You be like, "Wasn't quite it."

Maggie Smith: When I started writing You Could Make This Place Beautiful, I thought the central question of the book was what happened. What happened to my marriage? What happened to my adult life? Could it have been different? In the process of writing it and reaching the end of that process, I realized that actually, the central question was, where did I go? What happened to me? Talking Heads' David Byrne, "How did I get here?" [laughs] This is not my beautiful life. What pieces of myself did I maybe snip away and trade-off along the way, and how did I make myself small in ways that weren't necessary or helpful to me?

Alison Stewart: At the time, it seems that you thought they were helpful to this unit, this unit of your marriage and your family, so it was an investment in a way, I guess.

Maggie Smith: I guess that's true. I think that is maybe a gendered experience. It can be pretty common that we are culturally rewarded for being self-sacrificing and for, as we call it, intensively parenting, and for trying to keep the peace and make things run smoothly. That can be really challenging and can mean slippage in other areas.

Alison Stewart: You first learned of your husband's affair, and you write about this very much at the top of the book that you found a postcard addressed to a woman in a location where he'd been going ostensibly for work. When did you first have the twinge, your first twinge that something wasn't right?

Maggie Smith: Well, to be fair, if you find a postcard written to someone else after snooping in someone's work bag, probably you've had the twinge for a while because you wouldn't be looking if you didn't have a twinge. Communication certainly could have been better for a while then. I think that's not uncommon, especially for people with young kids, school-aged kids. Communication can become really transactional. Who's managing soccer? Who's got dinner? Who's doing this? Who's doing that? It's sad, but so often I think the relationships can get lost in all of that.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting in the book you note that you started going to couples therapy, and you don't tell the therapist for a long time that you found this postcard, and you also found a journal as well. Why did it take you so long to mention it?

Maggie Smith: I think I was afraid of what would happen if I just came out and said, "This is the issue," because I didn't think I could walk it back. If my work travel was the issue, if my poetry career was the issue, I had control over that, and I could do something about it. I could not travel for work. I could make my career smaller, and so that felt negotiable, but once I brought that other issue into the room, I didn't have control over the outcome anymore.

Alison Stewart: I got angry on your behalf a couple of times. The time that I got angriest on your behalf was part of this is that your former husband gave your child a pine cone that he'd found on this trip. The pine cone was directly related to this woman with whom he was having an affair. The idea of bringing the child into it, at that point, I was mad on your behalf. There's no question there. I wondered how--

Maggie Smith: I'll take that anger on my behalf.

Alison Stewart: Well, there was something about it, something about the inclusion of the child in this that felt had an ick factor to me.

Maggie Smith: I agree. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Okay. We'll leave it there. The name of the book is You Could Make This Place Beautiful. My guest is Maggie Smith. We learned a lot about your relationship beforehand. You met in a creative writing class, and he wanted to be a playwright for a while but decided to go to law school. Do you think he's giving up writing while you were actively pursuing it complicated your dynamic?

Maggie Smith: I don't know. Maybe. Part of what I really tried to do in this book and in life is only speak for myself and not try to ventriloquize through other people or imagine what they might have been thinking or might have been feeling. I only know what was communicated to me and that wasn't communicated to me so I wouldn't want to pretend to know.

Alison Stewart: I have to say, I think it was communicated to you not verbally, perhaps, that there were other things. There were ways, and you write about ways about how when you would travel, it was not seen as essential for work or it was not perceived as being essential for work. A lot of this book talks about and really shows us the invisible labor of being a mom and also being a partner.

Maggie Smith: That is true. I guess the one thing I don't know is how much of that is writing-related and how much of that is just simply my absence because I was the primary caregiver, so there's not really a way for me to know if I had to travel for work because of sales or some other job if it would have been as problem-making in my home as traveling for writing, but the other thing I'll say about that, and I think it's worth saying is I made less money than my husband at the time. When your work inconveniences, the person who is carrying most of the financial burden and yet you're not making a lot of money and doing the travel you're doing for your work, I think it could be hard for that person to swallow the extra inconvenience

Alison Stewart: Sort of a turning point. It's not the reason that your marriage ended. By the way, I thought about it were like little fractures, and then you had this great success with Good Bones, the poem. Just to remind people, would you read it for us?

Maggie Smith: Of course. Of course.

Good Bones

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 is 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.

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This place beautiful.

Alison Stewart: You write, "My marriage was never the same after that poem." How so?

Maggie Smith: That poem is for my third book. I had published and traveled a bit for my first few books, but that poem widened my readership overnight in a way I could not have anticipated. Suddenly, the requests were coming in for me to give interviews and travel to universities to do readings or headline literary festivals. My time had not been in demand. I had never gotten that level of attention for my writing before. It was not the career change where, "Honey, I'm going to be made partner. Let's talk about how we can readjust our time because of that," or, "I'm up for a promotion. Let's talk about what that might entail." It just happened overnight, no time to prepare. It created friction.

Alison Stewart: When you first noticed the friction that it was creating, what was your first instinct?

Maggie Smith: My first instinct was, "I wish you could be happy for me and I wish--" Also, I think my, my other instinct was, "I hope if the roles were reversed, I would be supportive of you going out and doing what you've been dreaming of doing for 20 years." Again, I'll never know. The rules were reversed if I would have been gracious about it.

Alison Stewart: What we get from the book is this idea of, it's not just loss of the romance, it's the loss of the family. The loss of this family unit. That even though maybe the adults can't get it together to have romance, we can have a family. When your partner, your former husband says he's not only going to move in with this woman, but they're going to move far away, how is that betrayal different than the romantic betrayal?

Maggie Smith: That was, I think, the hardest part of it for everyone, to be quite honest. I'm an adult. I can move on from heartbreak. I can meet someone new and have. I could even get married again if I wanted to. The parent-child relationship is not quite so flexible. When he moved away, that honestly hurt me worse on the kids' behalf.

Alison Stewart: There's such a telling part in the memoir when you have an essay you published about your divorce in the Modern Love section of The New York Times. You let your former husband read it, and he sends back his edits. The edits are fascinating. If you can take yourself out of it, the edits are fascinating. He included things like changing the line, the blue recycling bins were at the curb, it seems pretty innocuous, to the recycling my husband took to the curb. He wanted to remove lines about you crying. You write about his edits in the piece. I'm tempted to put edits in air quotes here, "was more psychologically revealing than almost anything he said in couples counseling or to me privately". What did you learn from those edits?

Maggie Smith: What I saw from the edits was an insertion of chores. These are the things that I did. I took the recycling out. I decorated the house for Halloween. I saw a removal, or a literal deletion, a redlining of emotion. Any instance of me crying was removed from the essay in his edits. First of all, that told me he didn't want to see me in pain, or didn't want to be perceived as someone who caused me pain. That's interesting. Also that the edits suggested he wanted to be perceived as someone who did a lot around the house, which I don't think anyone was disputing. It just wasn't really part of the piece. I found those two things really puzzling and interesting.

Alison Stewart: From an outsider's point of view, it feels like keeping score, "You did this, I did that. You did this, but I did that." That idea of keeping score, and I think in any relationship can be really toxic.

Maggie Smith: Also, I think that that comes down to some of that transactional communication, "You do soccer, I'll do dinner. You do bath time, I'll do story." It's in some ways a little bit of a cautionary tale perhaps to get ahead of things in your current relationship before you get to the point where you're keeping score and being really transactional about your communication.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Maggie Smith. She's speaking tonight at St. Ann's Church, along with Books Are Magic, tonight at 7:00 PM. We're talking about her new memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. As you were sitting down to write this, gosh, what questions did you ask yourself about the impact it might have on your kids when they read it one day?

Maggie Smith: I address this in the book. Really none of the material in the book is a secret. Actually, I don't believe in secrets. I think they're like cyanide. I think family secrets are terrible. I believe in age-appropriate, eventual, gentle conversations about real things. I think honesty is care in families. By the time they get around to reading this book, if they do, which who wants to read their mom's book, they certainly are not required. It's not on the syllabus. By the time they are adults and they get around to reading this, I don't think any of it will surprise them. It will probably also be something that we have a conversation about.

Alison Stewart: The form of the book is so interesting that it changes form. It's essays, sometimes it's poetry, sometimes it's one or two lines. Sometimes you address, "Hey, reader, guess what?" This is happening. How did it take shape?

Maggie Smith: I approach every piece of writing, whether it's a poem or an essay or a book-length piece, like a memoir with the same kind of consideration. I'm always trying to think, how do I embody or enact the experience in the form. I don't want to just tell the story. I want to help the reader feel the experience. I knew going into this, it could not be, first this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened.

I don't think that would've gotten to the narrative shape of rumination, which to me is more like a spiral. You're circling and moving forward at the same time as you're trying to process things and figure them out. Then to me, grief comes in waves. It's repetitive. It might surge up one day and then be quiet for a few days and then surge up again. The patterning of the different threads in the book were really meant to mirror the psychology of the experience.

Alison Stewart: Interesting. How did it feel to read it?

Maggie Smith: Aloud?

Alison Stewart: Yes, the audio book.

Maggie Smith: Oh, that was hard, honestly. I read it over three days. I did not anticipate how hard the first day would be. I think it makes sense to me now looking back. The first third of the book I think is maybe the hardest third. Readers, if you're in the first third, keep going. It gets brighter. It gets better. There is joy. There is hope. There is laughter. There is roller skating. Reading that first, that first day's worth five hours was tough. Then I went back the next day, and the next day didn't feel as bad. Then actually the third day, I had a great time reading the last third of the book. It was an interesting thing because, of course, I wrote it in pieces. Even the first third, I didn't sit down and write in two months solid, just front to back. I wrote it in pieces and then assembled it later. I hadn't actually processed necessarily all of those pages in quick succession-

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Maggie Smith: -as I had to reading it aloud.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned about the bright spots. There's this idea, and you go for it, that this is a reset. This is a chance to make a new life. This is a chance to do things new, to get a haircut, [laughs] to change your glasses, whatever, these superficial stuff and the deeper stuff. Let's start. One, what was a superficial change you made that made you feel better?

Maggie Smith: Oh, so many of them. I grew my hair long, not because it would make me feel better, but because it was a pandemic and I couldn't go every three weeks to get my pixie cut trimmed. I gave up contacts and started wearing glasses. Not because it was better, but because I'm getting older and my eyes are getting dry. It's so hard. One of the things I think I really, I took over my home office, that's something. It was a playroom for a long time. When the marriage ended, I was like, "I'm reclaiming this space." I'm going to give my writing the literal space it deserves in my house. The laundry gets a room, the writing should get a room, so we're going to do that.

Alison Stewart: You don't have to apologize for writing.

Maggie Smith: No. I don't need permission to do it. I don't have to apologize to do it. I shouldn't feel bad for doing it. It's not only my work, it's actually a core part of who I am as a person.

Alison Stewart: Has anything I'm sure anything you want to share, shifted internally, about how you think about yourself and think about your future?

Maggie Smith: Yes. For a long time, in the middle of the worst part of the divorce, I just kept thinking of all the things I had to do differently. Now, I have to start over. Now, I have to learn how to do this. Now, I have to do this on my own. I think I finally got into a place where I think I get to. I get to do things differently. I get to do this on my own. I get to make my own decisions. That slight reframing maybe it doesn't sound like much, it's just a verb change, but it really was perspective-shifting for me.

Alison Stewart: What did you rediscover? What is something that you had put in a box during the marriage about yourself that you decide to unleash?

Maggie Smith: Yes. My writing life. Giving it more space has certainly been something and not having to say, "Well, can I go do this?" I still have to do a lot of logistics working as a single parent to make sure that I can do what I need to do, but I don't have to feel guilty about it, which is really helpful. Also just leaning into my female friendships in particular. It's like now, I don't know, I think a lot of people when they get married, or even live with someone, they disappear into that romantic relationship, and you might text your friends or meet up once a month for dinner or something, but you're not really seeing them in the way that you were when you were single. Really being able to spend time with my friends regularly has been so incredibly healing.

Alison Stewart: Sure. The care and tending of friendships.

Maggie Smith: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You end the book with a poem titled Bride? Would you read it for us?

Maggie Smith: I would love to. I think of this as a Valentine for the self. This poem.

Bride

How long have I been wed

to myself? Calling myself

darling, dressing for my own

pleasure, each morning

choosing perfume to turn

me on. How long have I been

alone in this house but not

alone? Married less

to the man than to the woman

silvering with the mirror.

I know the kind of wife

I need and I become her:

the one who will leave

this earth at the same instant

I do. I am my own bride,

lifting the veil to see

my face. Darling, I say,

I have waited for you all my life.

Alison Stewart: When did you know you were ready to write this book?

Maggie Smith: Oh, it took a couple of years. It really did. It took a couple of years. Then ultimately, it was the book I had to write so I could write other books. Like a large piece of furniture blocking a doorway.

Alison Stewart: We're going to talk to a therapist and attorney who is very much about having a sane divorce. What should I ask them?

Maggie Smith: Oh, my gosh. How to have a sane divorce? [laughter] Oh my gosh. I guess one of the things I would think about is, what life do you wish for yourself on the other side? How can you go through the process of divorce to pave the way for that? Also, maybe the thinking of, do you want peace or do you want war? Sometimes there are things you have to let go of in order to just be done.

Alison Stewart: Who do you picture as your reader of this particular book?

Maggie Smith: You. I picture you as my reader. I really think there are so many different touchpoints in this book. I don't really think of it as a divorce memoir. My divorce is part of it, but there are other things that are part of this book, too. I think of this book as something that is really for human beings in relationships. I think parents will find bits here that they will find recognition. I think people I see bits of their upbringing in it. People might see that friendship echoes in this book.

My hope is that maybe it will inspire some conversations at home either with people's partners or even before they get to a place where they have a partner to think about what they want from a partnership and what they want from their work and how to make it all happen.

Alison Stewart: Maggie Smith will be at St. Ann's Church in conjunction with Books Are Magic tonight at 7:00 PM. The name of the new book is You Could Make This Place Beautiful. Maggie, thank you for being in studio. Have a great event tonight.

Maggie Smith: Thanks so much.

 

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