Reviews tagging 'Death'

Homie by Danez Smith

15 reviews

charnewb's review against another edition

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emotional funny inspiring reflective sad

5.0

Danez is this generation's Walt Whitman. Can't get through this one without sobbing 
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savvylit's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

4.0

"& how many times have you loved me without my asking? how often have i loved a thing because you loved it? including me"

Homie is a declaration of enduring and joyous love. Smith's deep compassion for their friends is a uniting theme in this structurally playful collection. Smith weaves their own identity as a Black, poz, queer, and nonbinary person through poems that capture how loving & living can be frustrating and beautiful at the same time.
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This was my second read for #transrightsreadathon 2024.
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yinflower's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective fast-paced

5.0

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eldritch_horror's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

I felt bad rating this book a 3.75 at first so I changed it to a 4.0. It doesn't resonate with me as much as BLACK MOVIE did by this same author, and while they do an incredible job at writing most of this comes from my own relationship with poetry. However, I would still tell people to read this book and give it a chance, it's a book I feel a lot of people still should take the time to read even if they don't like it themselves.
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fieldofhats's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.75

This was not an easy book to finish. It’s less than 100 pages, but it is extremely heavy. Danez Smith is a master poet who knows how to weave humor and dark topics together beautifully, but the heaviness often outweighs the humor in this one. This collection is poignant and relevant, but not wholly enjoyable. That’s not to say this is a bad collection by any means whatsoever — it was just hard to get through. Be thoroughly aware of the trigger warnings for this book before reading.
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mistercrow's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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astralfeline's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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lilawsahar's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Buy it! Read it! If you’re white, use it to develop some empathy! I’m white and my heart grew ten times the size. Off to go buy their other poetry collectives. 
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therainbowshelf's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

Danez Smith’s poetry is reflective of life, and takes a hard look at racism, homophobia, and living with aids. There are a lot of striking lines in this book. I listened to the audio, so although I don’t think I got as much of the poems’ contents, it was fun listening to Danez perform his work. I also appreciated the intro explaining the real title of this collection and why he called it Homie.
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yellow_star's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

3.75

Overall this book is basically Angry Poems, and an aggressive theme. But most of it is fair. Like the line "poeming some men's hands off,  they know what they did" (paraphrase not exact words) is aggressive but fair. There is a poem in the beginning about a whole group beating one kid up though so maybe don't have young kids read this. 

There's also themes of racism, bigotry, etc. There are also the  related slurs. 

The nature poems are so fresh! I love the completely new to me imagery for nature.

The poverty poems are also completely relatable. 

I'm not a huge fan of poems that jump all over the place like a lot of modern literary poetry does, but each poem is usually about some topic and mostly continues the same conversation. There's still a little bit of chaotic unrelated subject changes but very little. 
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