Synopses & Reviews
from Song of The Wreckage
I have no time for Red to be beautiful
with summer bloodied as it is & normal
as it's become, with the rusted, small bones
of boys who should be my father's age
buried under the beaming bones of boys
who should be my age, still tinged with meat.
have no peace left, it's been replaced by smoke
& I am sick of always running from the fire
this time. I am sick with impossible hues of black
boys, their dark ghost, crow winged angels raised
lynch high off the ground. I mourn all the time
right out the sky. I got no need for the sun
& the moon might as well be a warning shot.
How many black boys stolen in the hot night?
From their own homes? From their own bodies?
How many black boys until we make history
finally let us in on the joke? How little progress
before it's not progress.? How much prayer & song
must we stuff our mouths with before we lose
our taste for empty? I got faith like a man down
in the dirt who don't believe in no kind of God
how he gonna watch the earth turn his legs to rot
how he got eternity to feel dirty & left behind
& wonder if there might be a land of light.
Review
"The next time someone tells you spoken word poets can't make poems come to life on the page, send them to Danez Smith's [insert] boy, a remarkable debut collection that puts that tired notion to bed once and for all. In these poems, Smith opens the reader to a world of desire, longing, and deep mourning that picks up where his brothers Hopkins and Whitman left off. Startling in their formal range and virtuosity, these poems interrogate the ways the body not only inhabits but actually becomes public and private space: ...tonight, I am no one's pet, maybe an animal, wounded & hungry for revenge or sympathy but what's the difference? Danez Smith lays down the gauntlet for all of us to speak our deepest truths with more elegance, more ferocity, and almost more beauty than a reader can bear."
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Apocalyptic Swing, Poetry Editor for The LA Review of Books
Review
"Danez Smith is the crown prince of innovation and ferocity, a stunningly original voice that chooses not to recognize or respect those vexing artistic boundaries. Here is forte unleashed, an elicit glimpse of poetry's yet-to-be-turned page, a reason to stomp and romp in your church shoes. Hallelujah is an understatement."
Patricia Smith, Shoulda Been Jimmy Savannah and Blood Dazzler
Review
"Danez Smith is a poet of the body: I've always been all tongue and no brain but also a poet of embodiment. The poems of [insert] boy have need of the body — desire it and lament its mortality — but over and again they assert Smith's seemingly religious belief that every sound the body makes, every word and wail, is only possible through connection to some other plane of existence. Shall we say heaven? The soul? Our ancestors? Shall we say, as Smith does, I wasn't in/my right mind, I was barely in my body at all? This is a lovely, voice-driven book, singing high notes sharp as a switchblade."
Jericho Brown, Please and The New Testament
Synopsis
Poetry. LGBT Studies. African American Studies.
Winner, Lambda Literary Award, Gay Poetry 2015.
Chosen by Don Share for Boston Globe's Best Poetry Books, 2014.
2016 Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
Finalist, Norma Farber First Book Award, Poetry Society of America.
"The poems of INSERT] BOY have need of the body—desire it and lament its mortality—but over and again they assert Smith's seemingly religious belief that every sound the body makes, every word and wail, is only possible through connection to some other plane of existence. This is a lovely, voice-driven book, singing high notes sharp as a switchblade."—Jericho Brown
"Danez Smith lays down the gauntlet for all of us to speak our deepest truths with more elegance, more ferocity, and almost more beauty than a reader can bear."—Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Synopsis
Winner, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, 2016
Winner, John C Zacharis Award 2016 from Ploughshares
Winner, Lambda Literary Award, Gay Poetry, 2015
Finalist, Norma Farber First Book Award, Poetry Society of America, 2015
Finalist, Debulitzer, 2015
Chosen by Don Share for Boston Globe's Best Poetry Books, 2014
Danez Smith's writing is not safe. How can one's writing be safe when their life is constantly in danger? In their debut poetry collection insert] boy, Smith calls for a world where black boys and men are worshipped instead of feared, a world in which they live long enough to "feel the settling of joints, the experience of bones" to "die ninety & beautiful / & the causes more normal." In insert] boy, Smith writes intimately about their complex relationship to multiple forms of violence. Smith discusses domestic abuse in their family, the physical and emotional effects of rape, and being the target of racist and homophobic language. All of these experiences are based on their interactions with other men. They also includes a series of poems about their many attempts at healing, a constant process which unfolds throughout the book. The body is present on almost every page-particularly the mouth, knees, and hands. These three body parts often appear together in the same poem. In "King the Color of Space, Tower of Molasses & Marrow," Smith writes, "I want to kiss you. Not on your mouth, but on your most / secret scars, your ashy black & journeyed knees, // your ring finger, the trigger finger, those hands / the world fears so much."
-H.Melt for Lambda Literary Review
About the Author
Danez Smith is the recipient of a 2014 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from Poetry Magazine and The Poetry Foundation. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, VONA, and elsewhere. Danez is the author of [insert] Boy (YesYes Books, 2014) and the chapbook hands on ya knees (Penmanship books, 2013). Danez is the winner of the 2014 Reading Series Contest sponsored by The Paris-American and was featured in The Academy of American Poets' Emerging Poets Series by Patricia Smith. Danez is a founding member of the multi-genre, multicultural Dark Noise Collective. His writing has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kinfolks and elsewhere.