{"id":2992,"date":"2018-09-03T17:39:23","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T17:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=2992"},"modified":"2018-09-03T17:39:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T17:39:23","slug":"someplace-better","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/someplace-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Someplace Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t Call Us Dead<\/em> by Danez Smith<\/strong>
\nGraywolf Press, 2017<\/strong>
\n88 pages, soft, $16.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In their second collection, Don\u2019t Call Us Dead<\/em>, Danez Smith screams at America, particularly white America, to become woke, once and for all, instead of denying the genocide of black males via racism and homophobia. Smith\u2019s words are so pointed and powerful, impassioned and infuriated that I cannot help but equate the poet with James Baldwin, whose writing was frequently, as stated in his essay, \u201cThe Creative Process,\u201d a \u201clover\u2019s war\u201d with society.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this three-part work (since named a National Book Award finalist) replete with snake, blood, burial, water, fish, black sky, and star symbolism, Smith illustrates what is possible\u2014the frontier of form serving content\u2014poems with segments both traditional and prose-like, that begin and end in concrete form, are epistolary, contain lines that offer colons and backslashes, that are hermit-crab, fill-in-the-blank, and crossed out. However challenging, though, the texts are accessible, a balancing act achieved throughout the book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s words are often born in fury, as may be noted in poems that bookend the collection. In part one, \u201cdear white america,\u201d they make it clear that they would rather move to a new planet in danger of being sucked into a black hole than to continue to subsist on Earth. The poet asks, \u201c\u2026 how much time do you want for your progress?\u201d In part three, \u201cyou\u2019re dead, america,\u201d they make white america aware that only because of \u201cbrown folks,\u201d \u201crealer than any god \/ for them i bury whatever \/ this country thought it was.\u201d Unlike the black boys buried in earlier poems, the persona buries \u201camerica,\u201d respectfully, yet still using a lower-case \u201cA.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In \u201cSummer, Somewhere,\u201d the prologue, in which they write, \u201cif snow fell, it\u2019d fall black. Please don\u2019t call \/ us dead, call us alive someplace better,\u201d black men are removed from coffins as boys again, given a second chance, and \u201c\u2026 go out for sweets & come back.\u201d Trayvon\u2019s new name is \u201cRainKing.\u201d The poet inquires, \u201cdo you know what it\u2019s like to live on land who loves you back?\u201d The poem, although steeped in a context of injustice, is gentle, beautiful, like listening to a dirge\u2014a sense of relief and release created about this imaginary haven, racist and homophobic hell on earth slipping away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One theme of the timely collection is police brutality. In the prologue, such references as \u201csometimes it\u2019s they eyes who lead \/ scanning for bonefleshed men in blue\u201d and that even in this alternative heaven, they still can\u2019t shake their fears, \u201cwe wake up hands up.\u201d When I reached \u201cdear badge number,\u201d still in section one, I wondered why the poet was so heavy-handed with his emphatic two-line piece, \u201cwhat did i do wrong\/be born? be black? meet you?\u201d In another context, I would have criticized it for obviousness, but I realized that Smith sees the time for subtlety as long gone. Directness is needed so that white readers cannot possibly misconstrue their words.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Smith writes about homosexuality in equal measure. In \u201clast summer of innocence,\u201d the poet illuminates the final summer before the speaker was aware of their homosexuality. They write about homosexual dating and racism therein, and about sex itself. Tender lines come across as a love letter to black males. This work serves as orientation for what is to come: witnessing a grieving process as the poet, who has revealed publicly they are HIV+, takes readers through the agonizing stages that led to acceptance of such a diagnosis. The poem \u201cfear of needles,\u201d for instance, contains three centered lines written in second-person point of view, in which Smith pushes readers into a place of fear experienced by sexually active gay men:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>instead of getting tested<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>you take a blade to your palm<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>hold your ear to the wound<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The poet delves into the intricacies of being HIV+, discussing betrayal by partner and self, loss of future progeny, homophobic religious leaders, and even the disease as a form a genocide. They intertwine police and infected blood cells, jail sentences and HIV sentences. In the epigraph of \u201c1 in 2,\u201d Smith states that a 2016 CDC study revealed that one in every two black men who has sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV. They observe:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>If you trace the word diagnosis<\/em> back enough<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>you\u2019ll find destiny<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>trace it forward, find diaspora<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They push themselves in terms of not only content but also form throughout section two, most notably in the final poem, \u201clitany with blood all over,\u201d when the pain becomes so intense that the piece ends concretely as \u201chis blood\u201d and \u201cmy blood\u201d increasingly mingle, becoming one, across one-and-a-half pages of type.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To call Don\u2019t Call Us Dead<\/em> \u201cbrave\u201d would be an understatement, an insult. I wish that this collection did not exist, that there was no need. But there is, and since there is, I cannot think of a poet who could handle its subjects more deftly or with more grace and poignancy than Danez Smith.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Please also see Judith Roney’s Aquifer<\/em> interview with Danez Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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