“ not the kind of black man who dies on the news,” Smith muses. What held for Smith’s debut boy (YesYes Books, 2014) still holds for this longer second effort, whose most quotable poems address murderous institutional racism: “dear white america….i can’t stand your ground.” Much of the collection responds, in addition, to Smith’s diagnosis with HIV. Danez Smith has become one of a generation’s most noticed poets, and for good reason: at once a stunning performer and a tersely effective arranger of words on the page, Smith can address the Black Lives Matter movement, the erasure of black humanity by malign police, and then pivot to vivid, sexy, or scary records from a complex queer sexuality.
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