Ratings14
Average rating4.6
Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality--the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood--and a diagnosis of HIV positive. Some of us are killed / in pieces, Smith writes, some of us all at once.
Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--Dear White America--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.
Reviews with the most likes.
I will need to return to “summer, somewhere” and “every day is a funeral & a miracle”. Phew.
Damn. So many content warnings but I'm so glad I finally read this. I went with audio for this and it was phenomenal.
I read this book of poetry and listened to an audio version of it. It is haunting and beautiful and human. I wept through several of the poems.
do i think someone created AIDS?maybe. i don't doubt thatanything is possible in a placewhere you can burn a bodywith less outrage than a flag
the entirety of bare is one of the most beautiful things i've ever read and now i want to read everything that danez smith has ever written