Don't Call Us Dead
Danez Smith · 2017
Black queer life, HIV, police violence. Smith writes with urgency and music that demands to be read aloud.
The case against
Smith comes from slam, and some poems need the live voice; on the page a piece like 'dear white america' reads as oratory, its conclusions settled before the first line. The collection is strongest in the quieter HIV poems and weakest when addressing an audience it already knows agrees. Intensity this constant eventually flattens its own peaks.
Poetry · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
