“As if lost in the soft, bewitching world of fairy tale, Maggie Smith conceives and brings forth this metaphysical baedeker, a guidebook for mother and child to lead each other into a hopeful present. Smith’s poems affirm the virtues of humanity: compassion, empathy, and the ability to comfort one another when darkness falls. ‘There is a light,’ she tells us, ‘and the light is good.’” —D.A. Powell

“In her wondrous new poetry collection, Good Bones, Maggie Smith has much to tell us. And she does so with such a clean, aching clarity of lyricism that I discover now frequently exhausted human touchstones freshly, with real surprise. It’s Smith’s dynamically precise and vivid images, and her uncanny ability to find just the right word or action to crack open our known experience, that make Good Bones an extraordinary book. Maggie Smith demonstrates what happens when an abundance of heart and intelligence meets the hands of a master craftsperson, reminding us again that the world, for a true poet, is blessedly inexhaustible.” —Erin Belieu

“Smith’s voice is clear and unmistakable as she unravels the universe, pulls at a loose thread and lets the whole thing tumble around us, sometimes beautiful, sometimes achingly hard. Truthful, tender, and unafraid of the dark, the poems in Good Bones are lyrically charged love letters to a world in desperate need of her generous eye.” —Ada Limón