Danez Smith

3 weeks ago | nypl.org | Hadara Bar-Nadav |Steven Duong |Alison C. Rollins |Danez Smith

Bar-Nadav reimagines modern-day wellness from her perspective of a medical editor whose family history of Holocaust survival prompts her dissection of the pharmaceutical industry in a series of erasures and referential narratives. "Betta fish are a motif," Duong informs in his poem, "Novel." The fish stand in for conflicts of all sorts: familial, ecological, migratory, creative.

2 months ago | theparisreview.org | Danez Smith

By Danez Smith January 27, 2025 Before the sweat, before the bench press, before the sauna, before the shower, before placing my hand around a man, inside a man, around his throat so desperate for my hand, I take off my ring. While walking up to the doors of LA Fitness, I tuck the proof of my husband into my fanny pack. ***I’ve been to LA Fitness franchises in Philly, in Portland, in Atlanta, in Chicago.

Nov 13, 2024 | startribune.com | Chris Hewitt |Langston Hughes |Danez Smith

A: Do I wish he lived in a world where he could have been loud and proud about it? Sure. Do I feel like the people who needed to know did know? Yes. Q: Reading the Hughes poetry in “Blues in Stereo,” poems he wrote when he was a young man in the 1920s, many sound like they could have been written yesterday. A: Since caveman [days], we write about sex, we write about love, we write about war, we write about country, life and death and time. All the big things.

Nov 13, 2024 | time.com | Rebecca Schneid |Danez Smith

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser. By Rebecca SchneidNovember 13, 2024 8:07 AM ESTIn “anti poetica,” the opening poem of Bluff by Danez Smith, they announce there is “no poem to free you.” Smith asks: How can one read poetry at a time like this?

Oct 15, 2024 | atmos.earth | Danez Smith

Twenty-One Elegieswho owns the grief of these wings? how does the sky mourn? in revenge, the crows peck holes in our rising prayers. in protest, the rain refuses. no, we killed the rain. & the catfish. & the mussels. & the flying fox. the whiteof our palms a curse we pass by making, wanting. awfulkings, everything we touch we bless out of existence. what will be alive at the end of us? the ōʻō goneeven the name shocked at its passing. Hawaii, like anything,dies a little bit every day she’s American.