Good Bones: Who Are We Talking to?

The Poem “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith has recently become one of my favorite poems. 

I first encountered this poem at a writing camp that I counsel at during the summer. We read the poem as an assignment and then discussed it in a workshop with the campers. I actually got to assist one of the faculty in teaching this poem and I think that really helped open my eyes to what this poem has to offer.

One of my favorite elements of this piece is how it uses refrains throughout. There are numerous lines that continue to repeat all the way through the poem and it helps to create a rhythm almost to a hypnotic point. I can’t help but feel lulled a little bit when I read this poem.

I find the content of this poem to be super interesting as well. It is almost as if this parent is ranting to us as the reader. There is a truth about the world that weighs heavy on them but they can’t bear to share it with their children so they don’t. They admit that they have to sell the world to their kids. They spend the poem talking about the world as they would like to us and it gets to feel rather personal. About sad things that the narrator finds to be true like “the world is at least fifty percent terrible.” 

Something fascinating happens towards the end of the poem where the narrator shifts the way they are speaking. The line, “I am trying to sell them the world” marks when this poem turns and shifts into something different. The voice is different; the tone is altered. 

We get to the last two sentences of the poem and it feels as if the narrator is trying to convince themselves that the world can be good. It is almost as if they are confessing to us how difficult it is to lie to their children about something they can’t even really believe in themselves. The last line shifts the perspective of the poem and introduces a “you” for the one and only time in the poem. Why? Who is this addressing?

I think there are a few ways to look at this. The narrator could be addressing the reader here, putting the good of the world into our hands. They could be addressing their children in this final hypothetical statement or they could literally be talking to their kids for us to witness here at the end. Or it could have been another line where they were trying to convince themselves: making the “you” an “I”. Whatever reading, discussed or not, you subscribe to, it falls with power on my ears nonetheless and I hope you feel the same way.