What to say? Very moving. I like their particular ways of capturing joy. ( )

Sealy Challenge #2!

Loved this collection, very inspiring use of simultaneously casual and profound language in poetry. Such a great voice. ( )

The best book of love poems for black singles. I'm usually not a big poetry fan, but this collection had me from the first poem. This book covers every single type of a love a single person can have from parasocial relationships to the fantasy of a future partner to, of course, friendship. I listened to this in audio, performed by Danez Smith and it was such an enjoyable experience hearing the author express their thoughts with the intonation they desired most. One poem in particular is communicated in audio in a way that can't be done in written format. I wish it were an album. I'm looking forward to buying the paperback, giving it another read, and discovering all the quotables again. ( )

Funny and sad and moving and oddly majestic. Oddly because the word majestic implies a stiff formality and there is nothing stiff about this. Formality though? Sort of yes. The structure of these poems is odd, subversive in both their untraditional beauty and their rejection of conventional form. (Notably, there is a lot of verbification in this, which is something that generally bugs me, but Smith convinces me here that it has a purpose, and that verbification can be better than respecting the rules of grammar and usage.) The musicality and the word choice are consistently immaculate while framing the slang and profanity and truth. Individual poems veer from the intensely political to intimate odes to current friends and to people who have passed through and sometimes out of Smith's life without ever seeming janky or as if they are trying to do too much in a small space. And did I mention that some of this is heartbreaking and raw, but a lot if it is sweet and funny, and playful. It feels like Smith could shoot the shit equally well with Keats and Biggie. I am not much of a poetry reader but I found I was ecstatically happy to immerse myself in the water shooting from this hydrant.

*Favorite poem was. surprisingly to me, one of the most political. "Say it with Your Whole Black Mouth" shook me in a good way. "Oh my people/how long will we reach for God/Instead of something sharper." That is a call for revolution. The "opiate of the masses" discussion is older even than Marx, but when he said it he transformed it and made it real. Smith rephrases and does the same, though instead of making it just real he made it urgent.

**Again this reminds me why I do the Book Riot Read Harder challenge every year. Reading outside my conventional diet of literary fiction, creative non-fiction and romance brings some really great things, and as it turns out sometimes complements my standard fare very nicely. ( )

Holy shit this book. These words. I'd start one poem, and they are mostly one page, and I'd feel one thing the first half, and by the end I'd have done a whiplash turnaround. Just. These are so fucking good. They're just so good, and such a RELIEF. ( )