Smith graciously spoke with me while they were at the laundromat and we discussed the crafting of Homie, the surprising shapes of their poems, and how paradoxes of love and violence figure in the book. I would need to spend hours cooking an elaborate feast, large enough to feed all the characters of Smith’s world-and mine. To describe how deeply this book affected me I would need to sing. “With yo ugly ass,” Smith writes in “acknowledgments,” “at the end of the world, let there be you/ my world.”
Tenderness, in these poems, is wedded to insult, love to violence. The poems in this book are surprising and fervent, emerging from all the joys, sorrows, and complexities of friendship, intimacy, and desire.
Danez Smith’s third full-length collection, Homie, contains all the love and magnanimity that the poet-author of the National Book Award finalist collection Don’t Call Us Dead-is capable of.
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