“I was troubled by the question of how we teach our kids about the world without lying to them - telling them that it’s all good - and telling them the truth without scaring them.”
Happy bones poem how to#
Its subject is whether, when and how to talk to children about these hard realities. Closer to home, Smith says that she has gotten many requests for the work to appear in church bulletins and for her to read it aloud. The poem has been interpreted into a dance by a troupe in India, turned into a musical score for the voice and harp and been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Korean, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. It’s impossible to know how many people have read the poem, though one estimate in August put the number at nearly a million. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” - and “Good Bones.” Among the works most shared, according to the Academy of American Poets, were Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” W.H. Nov. 10 and 11 were heavy with poetry on the Internet. So, too, did shocking news: “Good Bones” spiked when British politician Jo Cox was murdered and again in the days following the presidential election. Soon enough, Smith, who will publish her third book of poems, “Weep Up” in 2018, was greeted by a friend in town who told her, “Oh, I just read your poem on Charlotte Church’s Twitter.”Īsk Amy: A woman is torn between heart, head, and horseĪrticles about the poem in the Guardian, Slate and elsewhere helped propel its spread. As the poem traveled across the Web, its celebrity endorsements got bigger: Caitlin Moran, Glennon Doyle Melton, Alyssa Milano, Megan Mullally. A reader moved by the poem’s message posted an image on Facebook, where a Brooklyn-based musician named Shira Erlichman read it and passed it along on Twitter. Three days after a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Smith’s poem, “Good Bones,” was published in the literary journal Waxwing.
Smith had no idea that she was setting down the first lines of a work that would seize the mood - and social-media accounts - of so many people in the tumultuous year that was 2016. “Life is short, though I keep this from my children,” it began. Last summer, Maggie Smith - no, not that one - sat in a Starbucks in Bexley, Ohio, and wrote a poem. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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