Bag of Bones

“Bag of Bones” is written in free verse, meaning that it does not follow a set rhyme scheme or rhymical pattern. The free verse form of the poem allows the speaker to create a sense of unexpected movement in the poem’s narrative, as its brisk, almost fragmented lines create a surreal and uneasy narrative atmosphere. The lack of a rigid rhyme scheme also appropriately reflects the poem’s theme, which is that of a country and society that has lost the moral and legal restrictions that could have prevented this tragedy—a more regimented and orderly rhyme scheme may have brought too much order to a poem that is, at heart, about a society that has lost control of itself.

The poem is set in a mass graveyard. This graveyard functions as the poem’s dominant symbol of death and violence, as the scattered skulls and bones in this graveyard belong to the victims of a dictator’s attacks against his own people. The unnamed woman’s quest to retrieve her loved one’s remains encapsulates in microcosm the link between the individual