WOOLGATHERING

A slim, poetic memoir of Smith’s early years.

Originally published in 1992, this manuscript was handwritten on graph paper when Smith lived with her husband and children near Detroit during a time in which she experienced “a terrible and inexpressible melancholy.” Throughout, the author intersperses vignettes from childhood with black-and-white photos. The title stems from an exchange with an old man whom children feared; she forgot her question but remembers his answer: “They be the woolgatherers.” Smith writes, “I was not at all sure what a woolgatherer was but it sounded a worthy calling and seemed a good job for me. And so I kept watch [and]…wandered among them, through thistle and thorn, with no task more exceptional than to rescue a fleeting thought, as a tuft of wool, from the comb of the wind.” Ardent Smith fans may be enamored with her recollections, which range from mourning the family dog’s death to nebulous lines such as, “I drifted to a place that seemed more present than myself, sitting, dutifully sewing as my fingers let slip the thread and joined my mind, elsewhere." In verse, she writes, “Careful how you bare yer soul / Careful not to bare it all.” In a more concrete passage, she declares, “The only thing you can count on is change.” The writing elucidates, to some degree, Smith’s artistic path, with themes of ritualizing time and space rippling throughout. After saying prayers, Smith recounts, “on particularly wondrous nights…something would unzip and I’d be off to be among them [the woolgatherers]. I did not run, I’d glide—some feet above the grass. This was my secret ability—my crown.” This edition includes a new afterword, penned by Smith in 2020, that addresses the pandemic as it relates to restricted travel; she combats restlessness by journeying through memories.

Ethereal spins of innocence and enchantment.