Bluff: Poems
by Danez Smith
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Description
Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems show more to be dissolving into desolate futures. Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language and a deep self-scrutiny. A series of ars poetica gives way to "anti poetica" and "ars america" to implicate poetry's collusions with unchecked capitalism. A poem makes clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. Another offers the history of Saint Paul's vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it. Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love, those given and made, are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Smith is a treasure. As always, they look at a facet of the world I think I've examined deeply, and then they just tilt it a tiny bit and I realize, shit, I haven't looked at all. Portions of this were difficult, exploring complicated complicity and maybe depression or exhaustion or hopelessness, but still quite an experience.
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Author Information
6+ Works 1,403 Members
Danez Smith's debut poetry collection, [insert] boy, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Smith has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation, and has published poems in Granta, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry. Smith lives in Minneapolis.
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- Members
- 102
- Popularity
- 315,375
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.36)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
