In “The Boxed Garage,” Kim Nierman Smith presents a moving collection of poetry and short prose that captures the fleeting moments of life and transforms them into lasting memories. With her spare, evocative style she guides the reader on a visual journey that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. This collection explores the transformation and decline of her mother’s mental state, a process that is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Through her poetic lense, Kim Nierman Smith distills the emotional and observational essence of this journey, inviting the reader to reflect on their own encounters with love and loss. “The Boxed Garage” can be read individually or as a companion to her previous work, “Park Parallel”. Together, they offer a unique perspective on being human. Kim Nierman Smith’s poems are intimate yet speak to the shared experiences of life. As she writes, “I didn’t think I had it in me, but there it was.” This collection is a testament to the power of language to transform our circumstances into art.
In “The Boxed Garage,” Kim Nierman Smith presents a moving collection of poetry and short prose that captures the fleeting moments of life and transforms them into lasting memories. With her spare, evocative style she guides the reader on a visual journey that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. This collection explores the transformation and decline of her mother’s mental state, a process that is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Through her poetic lense, Kim Nierman Smith distills the emotional and observational essence of this journey, inviting the reader to reflect on their own encounters with love and loss. “The Boxed Garage” can be read individually or as a companion to her previous work, “Park Parallel”. Together, they offer a unique perspective on being human. Kim Nierman Smith’s poems are intimate yet speak to the shared experiences of life. As she writes, “I didn’t think I had it in me, but there it was.” This collection is a testament to the power of language to transform our circumstances into art.
A Poem:
FRENCH TOAST
A love scene of butter
melting
in the arms
of spice
Brown fluffs
bubble on
a grill of savory
recollections
The dishwasher’s full
of sticky situations
to be run
on reason
The Boxed Garage, written by Kim Nierman Smith while taking care of her mother, is a collection of poems and short prose capturing brief moments of stillness during a turbulent and heavy journey. Nierman Smith's 'spare' and 'evocative' style explores grief, particularly anticipatory grief, and how we search yet stumble upon moments of clarity, peace, understanding and love in the everyday, the mundane and in the places we may least expect to find comfort. The collection very much reads like a loved one entering the garage of the relative they have lost, and beginning the process of unboxing treasures, memories and things you never knew, only to box them up again in a ceremony of letting go.
While some pieces felt too brief, abstract or personal to move me, the overall structure of the collection and its purpose of charting a journey taken moment to moment resonated. Several poems beautifully illustrate the originality of Nierman Smith's style: 'Vacuuming in the Sun' celebrates the peace and subtle magic to be found in chores, particularly when overwhelmed by life's demands, 'Spare Room' is a simple yet woeful piece reflecting how absence can feel,
'The grasses recorded / how things taste the same / and there's no sound / outside'.
Both 'French Toast' and 'Come Out to the Garden' capture glimpses of hope, of 'normality' and reiterate how these feelings do not have to be found too far from home. But Nierman Smith's collection is not linear and does not purport to convince the reader that life goes on swimmingly without complication or grief. Thus, the repetition in 'Waiting In a Blue Chair' reminds us of how cyclical suffering and pain can be and 'Bone Structure' yearns for the past to return, for time to unwind and remove the worries of age and illness.
'Let's count backward / and blush / again / Beautiful and imperfect / you are once / again' [Bone Structure]
The Boxed Garage is not about processing grief (although it very much includes this), it is about living with it, alongside it, and after it. Nierman Smith's words do not seek to force her reader onto a path of healing. These are poems that say 'this is how it was, this is how it still is'; there is no judgement. Instead, The Boxed Garage allows you time to pause, to relate and to find comfort in Nierman Smith's snapshots of love and loss.