![]() The poem is a monologue, written from the point of view of a parent-in Smith’s case, a mother. “Life is short, though I keep this from my children.” ![]() As people in the United States and across the globe struggle to reckon with a death toll upwards of one million, the poem’s message of finding hope amidst fear rings true as ever. The current COVID-19 pandemic has proven no exception. Since 2016, “Good Bones” has continued to resonate with people in times of distress, grief and pain. “It’s a weird thing to have your poem’s success, and in turn your success, be tied to something that is shared because things are terrible,” Smith tells Public Radio International. By December of that year, Public Radio International had deemed “Good Bones” the “official poem of 2016.” Less than five months later, the spotlight found “Good Bones” again, this time in the wake of the 2016 U.S. Published just days after the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida (the deadliest mass shooting perpetrated by a single gunman in the United States at the time), the poem went viral immediately and internationally. Take “Good Bones,” a poem by MFA alumna and former visiting faculty member Maggie Smith. ![]() Can anyone regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, time or place find within a piece of art some kernel of truth, a shard of mirrored glass that shows their own reflection? Can they step away from even the most abstract or fantastical creation and feel that they are seen, heard, understood? In honor of her birthday, see 20 vintage photographs of the much-loved Maggie Smith from her days as a radiant rising star, below.One possible metric by which to measure an artist’s success is the universality of their work. ![]() After some 70 years in the spotlight, there isn’t a genre she hasn’t conquered, an emotion she’s failed to capture, or an acting legend she hasn’t starred with. Smith has appeared in comedy capers, Merchant Ivory classics, and commercial juggernauts like the Harry Potter movie franchise, not to mention some stone-cold ’90s classics, The First Wives Club and Sister Act among them. It was the beginning of a love affair with the Bard that has endured over the decades: she played Desdemona in Othello (and earned her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1965 film adaptation) starred as Queen Elizabeth, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra on stage in the late ’70s, and as recently as last year joined Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh, Ian McKellen, and Derek Jacobi over Zoom for a charity discussion entitled For One Knight Only.īut it hasn’t all been theater canon. The Essex-born actor kicked off her career playing Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Oxford Playhouse, where she studied her craft. Before she was the grand dame of period dramas, Maggie Smith-who turns 87 today-was the sprite-like British talent blazing a trail in Hollywood after carving out a stellar reputation on the West End stage. ![]()
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