[REVIEW] Homie by Danez Smith

Graywolf Press, 2020

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

No one does it quite like Danez Smith. That’s it. That’s the review. Okay, that’s not it. You obviously need a little more. Here we go.

Danez Smith doesn’t just dance to the beat of their own drum; they slaughter magical animals of oppression with their hands, dry and stretch their skins, build the drums, call everyone together for a party, and then play the drums while dancing in a house built of words that can withstand a hurricane, the weight of history and racism, and a collection of memories best forgotten.

Homie, which is the title of this book only for the uninitiated, is a celebratory dance, a slap in the face of complacency, and an invitation to a revolution. It’s also a superb collection of poetry from one of the most interesting and unique voices in contemporary literature. In Homie, Smith opens their heart and their past and invites us all in to take a look. In fact, Smith does more than that: they make us their friend, especially those of us who, as people of color, have faced a different set of struggles.

There isn’t a single throwaway poem in Homie. That said, I won’t discuss all of them. Instead, I’ll give you glimpses of those that have stuck with me for weeks and are still with me now, a month after turning the last page.

The first one is “dogs!,” a strange crowning jewel that contains the taste of many of the cohesive elements that make this collection read like a whole: anger, humor, rhythm, and a message that’s stretched on top of the words like a cat, waiting for you to acknowledge it, to recognize its existence. It’s made up of little poems, all dealing with dogs in one way or another. Here is one I had to share on Twitter:

“scooby doo was trying to tell us

something when every time that

monster mask got snatched off it

was a greedy white dude.”

Here’s one that comes later and slices through our times all the way to the marrow to expose one of those problems that live at the core of this country like an intractable cancer:

“a dead dog is a hero, a dead lion

is a hero, a cloned sheep is a

miracle a dead child is a tragedy

depending on the color, the

nation, the occupation of non-

occupation of the parents.”

Danez’s is the kind of in-your-face poetry that revels in celebrating Otherness, that screams about the realities of the poet’s positionality. They are here to say things that matter, to scream about injustice:

“i didn’t come here to preach peace

for that is hot the hunted’s duty.

i came here to say what i can’t say

without my name being added to a list

what my mother fears i will say

what she wishes to say herself”

And this is Danez’s book, so they say whatever they want to say. In that regard, I guess some readers could find the language shocking. However, the way they use it demands attention. The title inside the book, the real title of the collection, contains a world of meaning. The words here are words that live in the interstitial space between being horrible insults and operating as reclaimed/repurposed terms that carry power with them. Yes, there are words here most people wouldn’t say/shouldn’t say, but “this ain’t about language/but who language holds.” Danez is in your face about these things because ignoring them is not how we make them better, how we bring people together, how we shine a light on racism, homophobia, and injustice.

Homie is timely, powerful, and honest. It’s one of those rare poetry collections that demand to be read because it contains the usual elements (i.e. love, memories, regret), but also brings other elements to the table, elements that are timely and important: bigotry, poverty, culture, and family. This is an elegant collection rocking short shorts; a fun read that’s extremely serious. Go read it. 

GABINO IGLESIAS is a writer, journalist and book reviewer living in Austin, Texas. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs. He is the book review editor for PANK Magazine and a columnist at LitReactor. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.

[REVIEW] [insert] boy, by Danez Smith

boy

YesYes Books

116 pages, $16

 

Review by Peter LaBerge

 

“Being black, holy, drunk, my mother’s son”

 

            Thank God for good poetry. Thank God for good poetry collections that leave necessary emotion in their wake, and thank God for poets like Danez Smith, who—through his debut Lambda Literary Award-winning poetry collection [insert] boy—demonstrates that what is political should be openly approached in personal terms, and vice versa. In [insert] boy, Smith ignites a discussion about life as a queer person of color in today’s racially charged, orientation conscious society. Through the arteries of movement, music, and religious (or non-religious) experience, Smith allows us to imagine life from his perspective in a way that only the most powerfully evocative poetry can.

The collection begins simply enough. In the opening poem “Black Boy Be,” Smith compiles a list of similes that complete the sentence “Black boy be _________.” We meet a character who ranges in manifestation from “a village ablaze” to “an ocean hid behind a grain of sand” to “blood all over everything.” Within the first few lines, we effectively meet a character who represents the world. Ultimately, we come to find this sense of motion informs many of the poems in the collection. In the first “Poem in which One Black Man Holds Another,” “the black boy falls into himself / & you mourn everyone ever.” In the third poem of the sequence, the narrator “make[s] fire in the absence of storm.” In “The Black Boy & The Bullet,” “one’s whole life is a flash.” By emphasizing the fast-paced, always static nature of his narrator, Smith enhances the experience of [insert] boy’s reader by reinforcing both the urgency of his message as well as the entrancingly violent quality of the events that transpire. Continue reading

The Lightning Room With Danez Smith

In the third PANK queer issue, Danez Smith gave us two poems, ‘Mail’and ’10 RentBoy Commandments.’ Below, we discuss the violence that tries to stay hidden, the nature of performance, and the very same hands we use to pray to God.

1. Both of these poems have an undercurrent of violence to them, a fury that manifests itself in bruises, in hands around necks. This violence, enacted and repressed, does it come up often in your writing?

Violence has a tendency to show up in a lot of my work, but not always in gruesome ways. Sometimes violence shows up in sexy or innocent ways, sometimes with teeth and tools. It might even be in all my work, even if underlying it, it just waits for its turn on the page, waiting for me to ask “How would you like to dress today?”

2. ‘Mail’ is constructed via a series of increasingly terse and explicit letters, which take on both a sinister and confessional quality. It’s a fragmented poem of terrific implication- how do you choose how much to reveal?

That poem was a mess and a half to write. I wrote it several years ago after sitting down and looking at my work and wondering if I had ever told the truth within my poems (and it was a resounding Heeeeeeellllll No!). I let it all flow out, making no choices about how the voice appeared, just listening to it and letting it say more than needed. The sinister tone is something I struggle with in the poem; it came from a ridiculous level of guilt, and not knowing how to manage that, there was a bite to the confession. I think there is a gentler poem that wants to show itself, but I’m not sure I was (or am) distanced enough from the subject to hear such a soft voice. Continue reading