One of the philosophical threads in Bread of Angels is Smith’s conviction that sublimity is woven into ordinary life. Sublimity erupts from unlikely places: the streets of New York and Detroit, notebooks and vinyl records, domestic and creative spaces, and everyday objects she refers to as talismans. For Smith, art embodies this merging of earthly and divine: “The artist seeks the infinite yet creates on earth, attempting to snatch a wisp of the consciousness of God, then returning to fashion material things” (141). The phrase “snatch a wisp” is modest: The ability to “fashion” does not come from seizure or possession but brief contact with the ineffable.

In childhood, Smith personified elements of detritus, imbuing them with meaning: “my secret stash. Glittering refuse I had scavenged from trash bags […] guarded over by my old blue toothbrush. I believed it was a magic brush, that communed with me as I brushed my teeth” (42). What others cast off as worthless became, in her imagination, luminous. Garbage is transfigured into “glitter” and “magic” that animates the memoir. Smith’s partnership with her husband, Fred, became a celebration of this kind of transformation in a shared life of collaborative creation.