Good Bones

Smith’s “Good Bones” is a free verse poem that consists of a single, 17-lined stanza. Using literary devices such as repetition and anaphora throughout the poem, Smith adds rhythm and sonic qualities to an otherwise free verse poem lacking set meter or rhyme scheme. The poem relies on statements and lists to drive forward the poem’s central message.

Told through the perspective of a singular first person speaker who is a mother, the poem begins with a direct fact-based statement (“Life is short” [Line 1]) immediately followed by a qualification (“though I keep this from my children” [Line 1]). These two phrases return throughout the poem, serving as the anchor for the speaker’s overall argument. Repeated in the second line, Smith’s speaker again states, “Life is short” (Line 2), reiterating this while adding an anaphoric sonic quality to the poem. Describing life’s brief nature, the speaker also touches on the various “ill-advised ways” (Line 3) one can shorten their life. While they don’t clarify what these ways are, they state that they keep these truths from their children, too.

“Good Bones” acknowledges the troubles of the world by admitting that the contemporary world is “at least / fifty percent terrible” (Lines 5-6). The speaker illustrates this misery with examples of beautiful, positive elements of the world (such as birds and children) followed by negative, hurtful, and harmful elements to which one can also be privy: “For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird” (Line 8). The speaker argues that good is always counterbalanced with evil.

In Lines 10-11, the poem returns to its original statement, repeating the shortness of life and the terribleness of the world. But in Line 13, the speaker suddenly changes tone. To this point, the poem lists everything the speaker tries to keep from their children. In Line 13, the speaker notes what they share with their children. Comparing themself to a “decent realtor” (Line 14), the speaker tries to make light of and recognize the beauty in the world that they actually believe is “a real shithole” (Line 15).

Concluding the poem with the concept of beauty and children’s ability to change the world and make it beautiful and worth occupying, “Good Bones” turns to the reader and asks them, too, to help improve the world. Unpleasantness does not have to define the world, and Smith argues it shouldn’t. “Good Bones” points to the next generation—the speaker’s children, the reader—and states that like a run-down house, the world has potential to be good if one makes it so.