Bluff
Poems
by Danez Smith
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Pub Date Aug 20 2024 | Archive Date Jul 31 2024
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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 to be dissolving into desolate futures.
Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti poetica” and “ars america” to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem—part map, part annotation, part visual argument—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.
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Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781644452981 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 160 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Natalie C, Reviewer
A powerful poetry collection that explores themes of Blackness, queerness, and the freedom to create art amidst a global pandemic and national protests for justice. Danez Smith has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary poets to date and this newest work of theirs does not disappoint. From groundbreaking poetic structures to hungry verse to this STUNNING cover, Bluff is a collection that you do not want to fuck with. Some standouts from Bluff include "1955," "Minneapolis, Saint Paul," "poem," and "principles," but I truly devoured each and every one of these works and would recommend this collection to anyone and everyone reeling from the violence of our capitalist system.
Pedro R, Bookseller
Danez Smith at his most hopeful, Bluff, looks to address the present “glitch in the system” that keeps us momentarily down by showing us what it takes to build a new world. The future is thoroughly contemplated by looking at the past and seeing just how much time is crucial and of an essence. In their poems we are spell bound to listen, to study “the difficulty of being” and to hunger for much more with love and “justice the verb not justice the dream.” The time to act is now for “there is still time / for beautiful, urgent change / which means there is still time / to make more alive / which means there is still / poetry.” 🫶🏽
Hannah D, Bookseller
Danez is one of the brightest stars in contemporary poetry and this collection was incredible. I had to read this slowly just to make sure it was taking it all in. I love a collection that pushes me to really look at the world around me and Danez Smith has continuously pushed readers to do this! Cannot wait to recommend this to customers!
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