Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Graywolf Press (2020), 96 pages
Description
Fiction. Poetry. Danez Smith is our president Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family-blood and chosen-arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez's friends and for you and for yours.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member rivkat
This book of poems has another name, but Smith doesn’t want white people to say it. It’s a modern Whitman in stream of consciousness and investment in the body and the body’s selfhood—here the Black body very specifically, often a male body. Smith is seropositive and writes about the drug
Show More
regimen keeping him healthy when so many have not been, and about the friends he’s lost as well as about the joys of staying alive. Show Less
LibraryThing member Narshkite
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.
*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.
Show More
(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.
Show Less
LibraryThing member tanyaferrell
The best book of love poems for black singles. I'm usually not a big poetry fan, but this collection had me from the first poem. This book covers every single type of a love a single person can have from parasocial relationships to the fantasy of a future partner to, of course, friendship. I
Show More
listened to this in audio, performed by Danez Smith and it was such an enjoyable experience hearing the author express their thoughts with the intonation they desired most. One poem in particular is communicated in audio in a way that can't be done in written format. I wish it were an album. I'm looking forward to buying the paperback, giving it another read, and discovering all the quotables again. Show Less
LibraryThing member bmanglass
Sealy Challenge #2!
Loved this collection, very inspiring use of simultaneously casual and profound language in poetry. Such a great voice.
Loved this collection, very inspiring use of simultaneously casual and profound language in poetry. Such a great voice.
Awards
Audie Award (Finalist — 2020)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Poetry — 2020)
Publishing Triangle Awards (Finalist — Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry — 2021)
Books Are My Bag Readers Award (Shortlist — Poetry — 2020)
Heartland Booksellers Award (Finalist — Poetry — 2020)
Minnesota Book Awards (Finalist — Poetry — 2021)
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nominee — Poetry — 2021)
NPR: Books We Love (2020)
ALA Over the Rainbow Book List (Selection — 2021)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2020)
New York Public Library Best Books: For Adults (Top Ten Poetry Books — 2020)
RUSA CODES Listen List (Selection — 2021)
Language
Original language
English