Intentional time alone can reap significant benefits for our mental health and wellness.
Solitude is a state of being, distinct from social connection, that facilitates a connection to self. While older adults tend to be more adept at using alone time to foster well-being, solitude can present an opportunity to improve mood and emotion regulation, spend time in nature, and engage in creativity (Weinstein et al., 2021).
Solitude can be rewarding. A sense of autonomy and inner peace has been shown to result from time alone, across the lifespan. It’s important to note that solitude differs from loneliness—the feeling of being alienated from others.
New York Times bestselling author of nine books of poetry and prose, poet Maggie Smith found insight and clarity in solitude following her divorce, resulting in her latest poetry collection A Suit or a Suitcase. I spoke to Smith about the collection and what it reveals about the mind-body connection, solitude, and selfhood.
Q: What inspired you to write your latest poetry collection, A Suit or a Suitcase?
Maggie Smith (MS): I’m a poet first and foremost, though I’ve published a few prose books over the past few years—including a memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and a book on creativity and the craft of writing, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life. I call poetry my “home genre,” because I started out writing poems as a young teenager, and I approach every project—fiction, nonfiction, books for children—as a poet.
I’ve published several books of poems, but I’ve never set out to write a book of poems. I write poems one at a time, and only years later, after seeing all of them together, removing some of them, and rearranging the rest, do I find the book. That’s when I see what I’ve been obsessing about! My fifth collection of poems, A Suit or a Suitcase, came to life the same way: one poem at a time over the past five or so years.
Q: Your poems explore the relationship between mind and body. How has your relationship with your body evolved throughout your life—and what has poetry revealed for you about the role of the body in containing the self?
MS: The title poem, “A Suit or a Suitcase,” engages these ideas directly. I found myself thinking about the way my body has been with me through so many stages of my life—childhood, young adulthood, new motherhood, and middle age. It’s not so much that poetry reveals the role of the body, but that I’ve used poetry as a place to have this conversation, with myself and with readers.
Q: Your poem Foal ends with the lines:
“Now that I have no other mind
to which I might apply my own,
I polish it to near-shining.
Thoughts come away
cleaner and cleaner.
If I lean close enough,
I can see my reflection.”
What contributes to the process of “polishing” the mind, providing clarity and self-insight?
MS: That poem is about solitude, and in particular the solitude of being single again after a long relationship. My divorce was incredibly difficult, and it took a lot from me, but it also gave me something—the opportunity to take responsibility for myself and my life. That in itself was clarifying.
I spent most of my adult life with my now ex-husband, from my early 20s to my early 40s, so my sense of self was anchored to that relationship. It was unmooring to be on my own. As it turns out, feeling unmoored is the perfect emotional weather for writing poems.
Q: How has poetry played an important role in your personal growth and development? In what ways can poetry be therapeutic?
MS: I think everyone should read and write poems, because poetry can transform us as people. Poems are where I do some of my best—and most unorthodox—thinking.
I don’t write as therapy, and I don’t even write just for me; I don’t keep a journal or write every day. But if my mind is chewing on something, my instinct is to pick up a pen and see what happens next. Giving the thoughts a form—a container—isn’t “healing” for me, but it’s clarifying and satisfying.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from spending time with A Suit or a Suitcase?
MS: I think of each poem, and each book, as a message in a bottle. I don’t know, when I toss it into the waves, what shore it might wash up on, or when, or who might be standing there on the shore to receive it. I don’t know what they’ll think.
Each reader gets to have their own relationship with the text, just like I do with the books I read. I find that freeing. I’m always changed—inspired, challenged, stretched—by the poems I read. I hope readers are changed by mine.