A Suit or a Suitcase: Poems - Hardcover

Smith, Maggie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1668090058 ISBN 13: 9781668090053

Publisher: Washington Square Press, 2026

Synopsis

Instant New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith returns with a new collection of poems on the sometimes-blurry distinction between mind and body, and how the self shifts and moves through time and space.

The title of Maggie Smith’s new collection comes from the eponymous poem:

You ask what I’ll miss about this life.
Everything but cruelty, I think.

But you want one specific thing,
so here—I’ll miss my body. I’ll miss

its companionship, how it’s traveled
with me, never leaving me—& by me,

I mean my mind. My soul? My self?
I don’t know what to call it, and besides,

my body hasn’t traveled with me.
I’ve traveled inside it. Do I wear it

or does it carry me? Is the body a suit
or a suitcase?

Within, poems turn over the strange relationships between the body and the mind, the self and the world. With her signature tenderness and clarity of observation, and with stunning swoops of imagination, Smith considers—and reconsiders—what it is to be human: Does one life matter in the grand scheme of space and time? How can it be that we are the same people we were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, but also different people? And could there be more to life, just beyond the borders of we can experience?

Each poem is an ode to the power of our minds and proof that both a life and a self, whether within a suit or a suitcase, is infinitely expandable.

About this title

About the Author

Maggie Smith is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of nine books of poetry and prose, including A Suit or a Suitcase, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Keep Moving, and My Thoughts Have Wings.  She has been widely published, appearing in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Nation, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Best American Poetry, and more. She is the host of The Slowdown. You can find her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Detail Detail
You’re the kind who looks at a painting

and wonders what’s happening beyond

the stretched canvas, where it wraps

around the wood frame, as if

it were a detail from a larger work

or, like a photograph, one small scene

inside a wider one, curated by the eye.

You wonder what’s beyond

the bowl of fruit, beyond the gray sea

with its meal of wrecked ships,

beyond the mother holding her burning,

red-cheeked child. You’re the kind

who thinks there must be more

than this, more than what you see.

The kitchen might be filling with bees,

drawn buzzing to the bowl of red

and yellow apples. And the waves,

the waves might be ruffling white

and folding over on themselves—

breaking, breaking like a fever.

Edition details

• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1668090058
• ISBN 13: 9781668090053
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128