“Repetition Is a Form of Courtship”
Reading Maggie Smith. Considering stories of marriage & its dissolution.
The day began with Sheela-na-Gig.
A friend sent a screenshot from Apple News. She saw that fabulous Celtic creature with the wide open vulva, and thought of me.
Just in case we should think something has changed in the world, it’s important to note that the headline was about male genitalia. Never forget: in this culture, we center the male sexual experience and simply gaze upon the female body.
Sigh.
And don’t even get me started on “filthy.”
But that’s not the story for today. Sheela simply stands at the doorway.
.
The Book I Tried to Listen To, Despite the Bitter Wind
The frigid winds have been wicked here in the Hudson Valley. As the Santa Anas menace southern California and fuel the firestorms in LA, I am deeply, deeply grateful that we’ve only had to fear falling tree limbs. I made sure my earbuds are sorted and Nuala’s leash was secure before I put on the Bernie Sanders style mittens and hunched my way in the gale.
I’ve been listening to Maggie Smith’s You Could Make this Place Beautiful for what seems like forever. It’s not a complaint, but it just seems as if her poet’s voice and the deliberate repetition that weaves themes and events manage to stretch the narrative endlessly.
It’s a book about the end of a marriage. And the marriage itself. And the moments after the end that led to the legal end. And then what happened after.
It’s the kind of memoir I would have avoided in the past. It’s not the book you are ready to spend time with when your marriage is like a sore tooth you don’t want to touch with your tongue.
It’s the sort of book to read, I imagine, when you’re coming to terms with the fact that there really is something wrong back there and you need the push to finally book an appointment for an extraction.
I bet it would be both painful and healing to read it once you’ve already been to the dentist.
Or, if you’re like me, it’s the right memoir to pick because you are (finally) able to read with empathy rather than fear. A combination of home remedies, time, patience, and plain old luck have worked, and you realize your own tooth wasn’t a lost cause. It wasn’t a fundamental structural issue, but a problem with the soft tissue that could, in fact, heal.
As you can tell, I have anxiety related to both dentists and divorce.
“Repetition is a Form of Courtship”
Somehow, I missed Maggie Smith and her poem “Good Bones,” which, apparently, was everywhere a few years back. I only stumbled across this book because my 2025 writing group, the Authors’ Knot, is focusing on memoir this year, and have been adding recent releases to the top of my TBR pile.
This is a good book. And I mostly love it, except when I don’t.
The nature of the memoir itself, with its patterns and repeated refrain “A friend says every book begins with an unanswerable question” is part of its genius, but it’s also why I keep pressing pause. (It may also be an audiobook problem - certain kinds of repetition can work better on the page, guided by formatting, etc.)
The strain that the author puts on the reader is intentional. So much of what she went through seemed unendurable. A story that includes betrayal, confusion, and all that brutal end-of-union litigation should be a challenge to get through. And sometimes, hearing the same framing device repeated again and again is a challenge. Except when it’s a masterful guide through the text.
In In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty Francis Weller says: “Repetition is a form of courtship.”
You Could Make this Place Beautiful is the story of a woman courting single motherhood and a new relationship with herself. And she uses the poet’s sacred tool of repetition to name what’s unchanging and to track the relentless transformations happening in her life.
On the other side of a marriage, we are all being initiated into a new sort of courtship.
The Poetry & the Mythology of the Everyday
I had started the morning thinking about Sheela-Na-Gig, the mysterious icon from those medieval churches in Ireland and the UK. Now, I was listening to the voice of an American contemporary whose life is very like my own in so many ways. (I may not be a best selling author, but we both make a living off our words, and our kids are just about the same age. Pandemic parenting = deeply relatable.)
At some level, I believe every poem emerges from the same source as our most beloved mythologies.
Even if it’s rooted in observations of suburbia and its soundtrack is pure Gen X alternative. Even if it doesn’t allude to a single god or warrior queen.
Poetry - and poets - give us the space to remember myths that go unspoken in too much of everyday life.
As I listened to Maggie Smith talking about the mingling of place and memory throughout her lifetime in Columbus, Ohio, my mind wandered to the mingling of place and marriage (and extra-marital love) in Irish myth.
There’s Deirdre and Naoise (fleeing her would-be husband Conchubhair). There’s Medb and Ailill (going to war over cows, never to reconcile). There’s Liadan and Cuirithir (they give it all up for love, but he chooses God over her). There’s Mongfind and Eochaid (he takes up with a British princess). There’s Bóinn and the Dagda (she’s fleeing Nechtain, and is eventually washed away and dismembered). There’s Niamh and Oisín (happy enough in Tír na nÓg until he tires of immortal perfection). There’s Sheila and Patrick (with only a few scraps of folklore to anchor that story, I only have the story I made up).
I worried that reading a modern memoir about the dissolution of a marriage would be too dangerous when my own union felt a little wobbly? Ha! Just look at the stories I have immersed myself in for the last three years of KnotWork Storytelling!
Stories have the power to reflect and shape the world, but they’re not to be feared like dark spells that will automatically change a listener’s destiny. (Which is why book bans are outrageous and cowardly.)
Stories might change us, but not according to the author’s agenda.
Stories are a catalyst. They work on the raw materials contained within the unique human soul.
Stories open new doorways. And then… anything can happen.
What about your stories?
What about your memoir?
I’m excited to announce tow opportunities for writers in 2025:
The Authors’ Knot Program, February - November 2025
An intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.”
This is ideal for you if you want more accountability and more specific feedback on your work. We're really going to focus on making progress on the thing you've been longing to write.
Due to overwhelming demand, I’ve opened a second cohort of the Authors’ Knot. We have three seats left! Is one for you?
Learn more & apply now.
The Writers’ Knot Community, January - June 2025
This is the long-running global community where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.
No push to publish. No critiques. No discussions of fancy prizes. In this group, our focus is on writing practice and creative camaraderie.
Register now
