Clint Smith

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Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of two books of poetry, the New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground as well as Counting Descent. Both poetry collections were winners of the Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and both were finalists for NAACP Image Awards. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Clint has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He is a former National Poetry Slam champion and a recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review. Previously, Clint taught high school English in Prince George’s County, Maryland where he was named the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year by the Maryland Humanities Council. He is the host of the YouTube series Crash Course Black American History. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and his Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. Born and raised in New Orleans, he currently lives in Maryland with his wife and their two children. Source

Chaos Theory

If twenty million years ago

The butterfly flew in a different

direction do you think

we would have met, maybe

we wouldn’t have even been 

people, maybe we wouldn’t 

have even been us, you know,

maybe you would have

been a tortoise and I would

be a raspberry,

maybe we would both be plants

on opposite sides of the same 

coral reef, so that we could

have been connected without 

ever having met,

maybe I would be an oak cut

down to be the home that held

you, maybe I would have never 

been, maybe the butterfly’s wings

would have blown the seed

into the river 

and away from the soil

which otherwise would have

become a bush of blueberries

which otherwise would have

been eaten by a squirrel or

some other prehistoric rodent

which otherwise

would have died

in a field of milkweeds

which otherwise would have

been carried by the wind

to another place

which otherwise might have

gotten caught in the feathers

of the bird which otherwise

might have flown to the other

side of the sea I could go on

but what I mean to say

is that it would have been 

such a tragedy

if something happened

that would have prevented me 

from meeting you

like a butterfly

who didn’t realize it was flying

in the wrong direction.

Published:

2016

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Friendship

Love & Relationships

Nature

Science & Climate

Literary Devices:

Alliteration

the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem

Interrupted Clause

a word group (a statement, question, or exclamation) that interrupts the flow of a sentence and is usually set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses

Pleonasm

the use of more words than necessary to express meaning, redundancy