I had three books I've been reading and I didn't think I will start a new one till today. I'm behind in schoolwork, and at life, pretty much, but one assignment for my English class made me pick this book off the shelf. For the afternoon, I read every page of it, and to my satisfaction, I loved it.

Danez Smith explores loss, trauma, friendships of their own, and even depression foods under a hundred pages. I liked a few of them. I really liked some of it, and the majority of the poems made me love it. I loved how in their form, I could see ASL (American Sign Language) in play. For instance:

"i poem ten police a day

i poem the mayor with my bare hands."

Using the word 'poem' as an active drive for change, and expression of their rawness felt very "ASL" to me. Instead of using a different verb, Smith chose poem as a verb; master of their decisions with what to do with a poem. In various poems, we can see Smith delivering their own signature, sense of writing.

I especially loved this collection, because Danez Smith as a black person increases the depth and rawness weaved in their poetry. I ache for it as much as I loved it.

Here are some of my favorite poems titled

"i’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense"

"the flower who bloomed thru the fence in grandma’s yard"

"dogs!"

"on faggotness"

"say it with your whole black mouth"

"white ni***s" (disclaimer: I am a white person therefore I prefer not to refrain from the censorship because it certainly doesn't belong to me to use)

"my poems"

"notes"

Reading some of the poems slow down my eyes, let me skied over it as if I was spending my afternoon snowboarding in a pow worthy mountain. You just lost yourself in it. Okay, I have to go, brb writing 6 pages paper on this book. (yes check this out pls, I hope I was convincing because goddamn this is so good)

I will definitely be checking out their other works. A talented, creative poet who delivers anything you are guaranteed to enjoy among their collection.

Trigger warning: death, suicide, loss (very heavy at times)

Funny and sad and moving and oddly majestic. Oddly because the word majestic implies a stiff formality and there is nothing stiff about this. Formality though? Sort of yes. The structure of these poems is odd, subversive in both their untraditional beauty and their rejection of conventional form. (Notably, there is a lot of verbification in this, which is something that generally bugs me, but Smith convinces me here that it has a purpose, and that verbification can be better than respecting the rules of grammar and usage.) The musicality and the word choice are consistently immaculate while framing the slang and profanity and truth. Individual poems veer from the intensely political to intimate odes to current friends and to people who have passed through and sometimes out of Smith's life without ever seeming janky or as if they are trying to do too much in a small space. And did I mention that some of this is heartbreaking and raw, but a lot if it is sweet and funny, and playful. It feels like Smith could shoot the shit equally well with Keats and Biggie. I am not much of a poetry reader but I found I was ecstatically happy to immerse myself in the water shooting from this hydrant.

*Favorite poem was. surprisingly to me, one of the most political. "Say it with Your Whole Black Mouth" shook me in a good way. "Oh my people/how long will we reach for God/Instead of something sharper." That is a call for revolution. The "opiate of the masses" discussion is older even than Marx, but when he said it he transformed it and made it real. Smith rephrases and does the same, though instead of making it just real he made it urgent.

**Again this reminds me why I do the Book Riot Read Harder challenge every year. Reading outside my conventional diet of literary fiction, creative non-fiction and romance brings some really great things, and as it turns out sometimes complements my standard fare very nicely.

Poetry sometimes feels inaccessible and pretentious, this was the opposite. I love how DS thinks about friendship.

This didn’t connect as I would have hoped. Today has been a knotty rope of estrangement, restless hands pick and attempt to loosen—but the pace of the day cottons more to regular sighs than a gasp. This time at home continues to stretch and I shouldn’t complain.

The poems are dense, steeped in poverty, in HIV, in an implied danger.

For now I’m passing on the stack of poetry my wife bought me for my birthday.

Truly extraordinary. A masterpiece of anger and love and community. Not a single bad poem in it.

Super duper good. I gotta read more of their work. My favorites were:
-my president
-on faggotness
-for Andrew
-happy hour
-trees!
-notes
-acknowledgments