Hasidic Girl’s Uplifting Poem Goes Viral
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A poem by an 11th grade girl from a Hasidic family in Crown Heights has gone viral on social media.
“Worst Day Ever?” by Chanie Gorkin was first posted last year on the Poetry Nation website, where Chanie is a member. She was a semi-finalist in the website’s July to December 2014 contest and the poem was published in a collection of poems titled “Beyond the Sea: Odyssey.”
A copy of the poem was hung on a bulletin board in a grocery store where it was photographed last week and posted online, where it was shared and liked thousands of times on social media, according to Poetry Nation.
It took several days before Chanie was identified as the writer of the poem, which reportedly was first written as a class assignment. She is a student at the all-girls Lubavitch high school Beth Rivkah in Crown Heights.
The poem sounds pessimistic when read from top to bottom, but the reader is instructed at the end of the poem to reread it from the bottom up to find out how the writer really felt about her day.
It reportedly has been translated into several languages, including Hebrew, Chinese and Russian.
Chanie’s mother, Dena Gorkin, who first shared the poem on her Facebook page without crediting her daughter as the author at Chanie’s request, told Poetry Nation that her daughter does not even know yet about the success of her poem since she is at summer camp and does not have access to a computer or the Internet. She said she is “glad that it’s having a positive effect on people.”
“Worst Day Ever?”
by Chanie Gorkin
Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one’s surroundings are good
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say
Today was a very good day
Now read it from bottom to top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
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