The poems in Maggie Smith’s 2021 collection Goldenrod urge their reader to sit still with life’s troubles until something clarifying shines through. Consider these first lines of “At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees:”

“When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like/ finally, and rushes in.”

Smith’s subjects range in scale from the personal (comforting a feverish child) to the national (the shock of the Sandy Hook shootings). Her tone lands somewhere between exhausted and exultant. I’d recommend this book to fans of Mary Oliver’s poetry, or Lorrie Moore’s short stories.