Review: Good Bones by Maggie Smith - The Los Angeles Review.
In this collection titled for a poem that became an unlikely viral sensation, Smith follows The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison by exploring the sensorium mothers and children share in a place where.
As the writer Kyle Minor wrote on Maggie Smith’s Facebook wall, “this is a poem people will be passing around and posting on their doors in a hundred years and also today and tomorrow.” The voice of “Good Bones,” is female, a mother. A parent worrying about children — that does speak to much of the pain felt during and post-Orlando.
The poem “Good Bones” became the title of a new book by Smith in 2017, with work that carries her notion much further. Leaning on simple language while nudging with juxtaposition and parable-like delivery, each poem is an easy read but makes no effort to sit still or offer any assumed endings; we, as readers, end up taking off with thoughts unexpected.
Her poem “Good Bones” has gone viral—tweeted and translated across the world, featured on the TV drama Madam Secretary, and called the “Official Poem of 2016” by Public Radio International, earning news coverage in the Washington Post, Slate, the Guardian, and beyond. Maggie Smith was named the 2016 Ohio Poet of the Year. Save Save.
Maggie Smith's Good Bones poem goes viral in wake of Orlando, Jo Cox shooting. By Felicity Morse. Saturday, 18th June 2016, 3:31 pm. Updated Friday, 6th September 2019, 5:00 pm. Maggie Smith.
Good Bones. by Maggie Smith. Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine.. We want to preserve as many buildings with “good bones” as possible while telling and teaching our children how to make it their own and make it beautiful. It’d be nice if things were perfect, or even just better.
In Good Bones, first published in 1992, Margaret Atwood has fashioned an enthralling collection of parable, monologue, mini-romance and mini-biography, speculative fiction, prose lyric, outrageous recipe and reconfigured fairy tale, demonstrating yet again the play of an unerring wit overseen by a panoramic intelligence. Good Bones is a cornucopia of good things — precise.