Thursday Poetry Post: Good Bones

This place could be beautiful, right?

A little over a month ago, Maggie Smith went viral again, or at least semi-viral, writing about her viral poem, Good Bones. If you’re not a “poetry person,” you still might’ve read this poem before, since Smith wrote it in the summer of 2016 and it was reposted on every social media platform following every bleak event for the last…seven years.

Smith’s memoir is coming out, which is why she popped up all over social media in late March. The Cut ran an excerpt of her book, where she talks about Good Bones, and writes specifically about the impact of that poem’s success on her marriage.

I’ve been revisiting this poem since I read the (very good!) memoir excerpt, and a few things stood out to me that hadn’t before. It originally appeared in Waxwing, alongside two other poems that helped me with my recontextualization.