![]() “It’s a weird thing,” she says, “to have your poem’s success, and in turn your success, be tied to something that is shared because things are terrible.”Īnd even though "Good Bones" was published in the summer of 2016, Smith had actually written it a year previous, and she wasn’t thinking about world events at all. Smith feels proud of her poem’s popularity, of course, but also a little conflicted. It was one of the most shared poems on the internet, according to the Academy of American Poets, along with Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” and W.H. It was even turned into a musical score.Īfter the US presidential election, on November 10 and 11, Smith’s poem started getting traction all over again. It was also interpreted by a dance group in India, translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Korean, Tamil and Telugu to name just a few of the languages. Her poem travelled across the internet like wildfire, re-shared by people both in the UK and the US. “It was sort of this perfect storm of terrible things happening in different places,” says Smith. Smith’s poem was first published in the online literary journal Waxwing in June 2016, a couple days both after the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and after the murder of British politician Jo Cox in West Yorkshire. Right? You could make this place beautiful. Walking you through a real shithole, chirps onĪbout good bones: This place could be beautiful, Stranger, there is one who would break you, Is at least half terrible, and for every kind The world is at leastįifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservativeĮstimate, though I keep this from my children.įor every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.įor every loved child, a child broken, bagged, ![]() In a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, Life is short, though I keep this from my children. It’s about making the most of a world that is far from perfect. The poem is called “Good Bones," by Maggie Smith, a poet in Bexley, Ohio. In the aftermath of many of these tragic or difficult events, there has been one poem - consistently shared over and over again.Īccording to some estimates, it has been read by nearly a million people. The year of terrorist attacks all over the world. It’s been the year of a contentious US election season. All sorts of news publications have even asked if it was the “Worst Year Ever.”
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