Good Bones

“Good Bones” is by Maggie Smith—an American poet of several full length collections of poetry and award-winning chapbooks. “Good Bones” was initially published in 2016 in Waxwing Literary Journal. Since then, the poem has gone internationally viral on the internet, becoming the official poem of 2017, according to Public Radio International (PRI). The poem’s publication was timely, appearing the same week that several traumatic international events occurred, including the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and the murder of Jo Cox, a member of parliament, in the UK. Shared on Twitter, the poem quickly gained attention and became a mouthpiece for the confusing world in which readers suddenly found themselves.

“Good Bones” is a single 17-line stanza and explores themes of existence, the state of the world, and how to happily and peacefully live in a world mired in violence. Smith’s speaker is a mother struggling to keep the nastiness of the world from her children. A poem that explores “what it means to raise children in fraught times” (Foust, Rebecca. “Poetry Sunday: ‘Good Bones’ by Maggie Smith.” Women’s Voices for Change), “Good Bones” urges the reader to believe in the goodness of the world despite all the bad, and to try to “make this place beautiful” (Line 17).

Poet Biography

Maggie Smith (1977) was born in Columbus, Ohio. She earned a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA in poetry from Ohio State University. Smith is the author of several books of poetry and award-winning chapbooks, including The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (2015), which won the 2021 Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in poetry and Good Bones (2017), which was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017. Her first full-length collection, Lame of the Body, was published in 2005.

A decorated poet, in 2011 Smith received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has also been the recipient of a Pushcart Award, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, and various fellowships, including one from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Smith has received prestigious fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

Smith is most known for “Good Bones,” which went internationally viral upon publication. The poem was reprinted and discussed by several prominent news sources, including the Washington Post and the Guardian. Adored by many and widely received and respected since its publication, the poem has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. “Good Bones” has also been set to music by multiple composers and even interpreted by a dance group in India. Named by Public Radio International (PRI) as the official poem of 2017, “Good Bones” exploded Smith’s name onto the scene of poetry—and the world.

Smith has taught creative writing and lectured at several prominent universities, including Gettysburg College, Ohio State University, and the Antioch University Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA program. Smith also worked many years in educational publishing but has since left this career to pursue freelance writing and editing. She is currently the Editor at Large for the Kenyon Review and teaches as part of the MFA faculty for Spalding University’s creative writing department in Louisville, Kentucky.

Smith’s poems have been published in many prestigious literary journals, including The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times, Tin House, and Best American Poetry.

Poem Text

Smith, Maggie. “Good Bones.” 2016. The Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Smith’s “Good Bones” explores the concept of life and the state of the world through the eyes of a mother. The poem opens with a statement (“Life is short” [Line 1]), repeated three times throughout the poem. Smith’s speaker recognizes the brevity of human life, and the “ill-advised” (Line 3) ways one can make their life even shorter. The speaker offers a definition of the world (“The world is at least / fifty percent terrible” [Lines 5-6]) followed by specific examples to back this statement.

All of this, however, is kept from the speaker’s children; the speaker reaffirms this four times in the poem. The speaker repeats the statement that opens the poem (“Life is short” [Line 10]) and lists another example of how the world is “at least half terrible” (Line 11). In Line 14, the speaker compares themself to a “decent realtor” (Line 14) trying to sell the world to their children. The poem concludes with the speaker speaking to their children about “good bones” (Line 16) and encouraging their children, despite the awfulness, to try to help “make [the world] beautiful” (Line 17).