Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

By Danez Smith

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry
Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection

“[Smith's] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy.”—The New Yorker

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality—the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood—and a diagnosis of HIV positive. “Some of us are killed / in pieces,” Smith writes, “some of us all at once.” Don’t Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America—“Dear White America”—where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781555979775

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of [INSERT] BOY (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His 2nd collection, Don't Call Us Dead, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. He is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on ya knees and black movie, winner of the Button Poetry Prize. His work has published and featured widely including in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Buzzfeed, Blavity, and Ploughshares.

Book preview

[Ana Salgado · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely amazing. It seems one of a kind. Just a truly visceral experience that is a must-read for everyone. I can't believe I've waited this long to read this book. It was beyond any expectations I could have had of it.

[anna · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is, by far, one of the best poetry collections I have ever read. It's a discussion of the ways black people in America die, and it's both brutal and beautiful in it's symbolism and wordplay. I don't want to say too much because I implore you to read it as I did: with very little knowledge going into it. The way it unfolds before you catches you off-guard and hurts you, but it's worth it all in the end. I cannot wait to devour anything and everything else Danez Smith writes.

[tiny · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Took me through his world, words were carefully chosen, the story unfolded through alliteration and imagery, definitely left an impact on the soul

[Gabi Ohyes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Poetry so raw I almost chocked on its blood or in my tears.

[sashastorylover · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Powerful, impactful and heartachingly beautiful poetry collection by Danez Smith where they talk about living black, queer and HIV positive in the USA. So many poems have given me chills, but just as many flew over my head (not because of what they are but because I am not very good at understanding poetry).
I have read Don’t Call Us Dead as ebook but I will be acquiring an audio book later this month to reread the collection via audio. I have listened to You’re Dead, America and Dear White America and they have impacted me more than just me reading the poems.

Highly recommend!

[Muhammad Rajab Al-mukarrom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the pengest & the gayest poetry books I’ve read.

[Fred Slusher · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! I love Danez Smith’s poetry, the way they’re able to take pain & make it poetry. Keep up the good work, fam!

[lucaconti-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not a easy book of poetry but it is actual and full of meanings about being black today

[angelreadsthings · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If I had just once sentence to describe this book, I would say that it is a gift. Smith’s indefatigable commitment to truth – through beauty and ugliness, through clarity and doubt, through love and fear – challenges readers to look modern day Black/queer realities dead in the eyes and to imagine something better for Black/queer futures. I highly recommend reading this collection and accepting that challenge.

[narshkite · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Smith is brilliant, one of the few exceptions to the rule that I don't really connect with poetry. Smith's work carves me out and teaches me. This collection is about the blood of black men, those who fall to white supremacy whether through the violence it creates, validates, and perpetuates, to HIV, or to suicide and other weapons. Their work is so raw, I almost feel like a voyeur reading it, as if I am seeing something private, the most intimate grief. This is stunning.

I read the collection and then got the audio read by the author. The experience is different and I am glad I did both.

[dominiquedavis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Such a powerful, influential, and vital read. Everyone should have an opportunity to read it.

[greeniezona · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was recommended to me by the wondrous people at Tailored Book Recommendations when I asked for more poetry, and I absolutely fell in love with it. Filled with fierce love, joy, and mourning, it centers its gravity on the expendability of black bodies -- particularly young black boys and gay black men.

The first series of poems, "summer, somewhere," imagines an afterlife of eternal summer for the black boys who died before they had a chance to be men. It contains one of my favorite stanzas:

paradise is a world where everything
is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.

As much as this collection wants you to bear witness to the gun -- literal guns, metaphorical guns -- the guns that kill you quick, and the guns that take half your life to kill you, your whole life to kill you. The guns someone brandishes at you and the guns swimming through your own veins. It also builds sanctuary. Through the imagined paradise of black boy heaven, the plot to "Dinosaurs in the Hood" (my favorite poem here), owning lust and love and connection as a gay black man, a "little prayer" for healing.

I checked this out from the library but I may need to buy a copy so that I can unfold it over and over, bear witness, and share the dream.

[benkline · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I've never read (or heard of) Danez Smith before this. I also don't typically read poetry but I have enjoyed several/numerous works in the past, and I enjoy dipping my toe into poetry every so often. This was in the new section at the Hershey Library and was recommended to me there (as it appears also to be up for several awards / the author is up for several awards.) Looking at the reviews this has gotten.... most likely my review will be ...not the norm, as I will be reviewing this less favorably than most did. Some of which might be because of my lack of knowledge/fondness/insight into poetry, some of it might be because I am not (or am I?) the target demographic for this particular set of poetry, but I think my review upholds mostly because its an honest review.

Danez Smith is (as you quickly find out reading through the poems), an African-American gay (or possibly bi-sexual, some lines suggest he might be 'bi' or at one point was or at one time acted as if he was straight to appease society/family) and HIV positive. (Other than knowing he was African-American by the back cover and the cover image used, the rest was unknown to me ahead of time.) So much of his poetry resonates from these themes/categories.

He rails against the anti-black, anti-gay, anti-black/gay discrimination he feels is prevalent in society; not so much as aimed at HIM directly but aimed at ALL directly. He almost falls into the trap of the 'stereotype Angry Black Man' with much of his writings/poems; and much for good reason (and some not). All of the poems are about the oppression of blacks, particularly gay black men, and particularly those stigmatized by being HIV positive.

I understand the hate and the anger against cops. I empathize with it. I obviously don't have the same feelings, I don't have the same background, haven't had the same prejudices against me, or the fear or worry about cops and just violence against blacks in general.... but much of this just reads as hate. Like reverse hate. And it seems to be a bigger problem to it all in general, and its not just Smith, its things in general. 'I think the cops are out to get me' / 'The cops are out to get me' so 'down with the cops' / 'violence against cops!' . It'll be a cycle that won't get broken. He even at one point in the one poem brings up Martin Luther King. I can't believe King would condone the speech Smith uses in the poems about cops, or the speech used in general against cops. Showing hatred to hatred will not stop hatred. Its also painted generalizations. He rails about how gay black men (and black men, and HIV sufferers) are prejudged and hated on and stereotyped and have to deal with all that backlash just because of who they are - as a group, not as an individual - and here he is doing the same against cops, against whites, etc. And sadly, this doesn't distance Smith against much else written, as there is a ton of literature online in blogs, in music, in social media, etc, about black vs. cops and gay vs. straight et cetera.

Much of the poems feels and reads like free verse social media posts by your friend who doesn't use correct punctuation but has a very deep passion and just has to write it all out and get it all out and let it loose. Much of these poems also feel like a first attempt / first draft, or just plainly the only draft. Like he wrote it down, got it out, saved it in Microsoft Word, and then at the end collected them all and handed them off to the editor/publisher/agent/whoever and they nodded and went 'ok'. The poems are FILLED with passion, there is no doubting that. And I think much of the select words were chosen on purpose, but I don't think there was a direct care or worry about the writing in general, in a broader sense. As if there wasn't a total of care put into the sentence (line, or poem) structure, but certain words were selected with the upmost care, and things were kind of build around it to a degree.

I'm hoping maybe the library will have his previous work or will get any more he does, just to compare this to them and see if he has more in him, and is better than this, but this was sorely lacking and a disappointment to me, especially considering the reviews I have read.

And again, I'm not sure if that's my lack of familiarity with poetry, or not being the target demographic (though I think I am actually the target demographic, and he was hoping to ensnare 'non-African Americans' and get them to see his side, which is ultimately the purpose of any writing, but specifically this piece). I just found it a wash, and not as resonating as I'm sure he'd hope for it to be.

For instance the raw verbiage and discussing about how much of the digital age, the 'app' culture - using Grinder to meet other guys, and how some will say 'no black men' and things like this. I can understand and even relate to degrees of it, the intensity is admirable and the passion is definitely there. I think structure, deep themes, complexity, and just something isn't there. Each poem pretty much runs into the next as there is no real distinction amongst most of them. Variety and depth is lacking in that area. I also think maybe he doesn't quite get the context of things like 'no black men' and stuff like that in the same way there is trolls and targets and anti-this or anti-that on any app or site. For dating sites you'll see all kinds of "no X" or "no Y". In the same way in reverse, you'll see things like "only black men" or "only white men" or "only fat chicks" or stuff, whereas you'll see the same in reverse "no black men" or "no white men" or "no fat chicks" and in reverse... ad nauseum. Its the nature of the medium that targets millions upon millions of people. 'No redheads, no blondes, no brunettes, no blacks, no whites, no pregnants, no disabled, no huge, no small, no tall, no short, no bald, no hairy, etc. etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.'

I do understand where he is coming from, and I empathize, and hopefully this will resonate with me as time goes on and I move away from the work. But I think it won't - hopefully I'll be proven wrong. Time will tell.

[lydia1879 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This poetry collection is fierce and burning and bright.

I don't like to compare artworks because it feels unkind to both artists, but this collection feels like the Oscar-winning film Moonlight in poetry form.

The way he writes is exceptional and effortless, except it's come from a place of effort so it truly means something. Smith takes a queer, black young men, boys 'as brown as rye bread' and creates a paradise for them, so that when they die at the hands of police violence, they can be loved, cherished and honoured in the way they deserve.

Except it's not heaven, because the boys never died. They live on, eternally, never to be forgotten. All of their toxic masculinity washed away.

Smith uses his poetry to discuss some things that the queer community has long neglected, racism on Grindr, HIV diagnoses and writes them into being. With the ugly and the beautiful side by side and it feels like life.

We see a lot of young black men dying at the hands of police violence and it's exhausting and hard to picture an alternative. Without being able to see an alternative, we accept, as difficult as it might be, that this is the way things are, this is how they have to be, this is how they've been.

Smith, without ever disregarding his history, shows us what paradise might look like.

And it's black, and it's beautiful.