RaveThe Poetry FoundationThe associative, frequently double-spaced lines of The Book of Daniel feel looser—wilder—than in Smith’s previous work, perhaps a reflection of what many Americans characterize as the increasingly chaotic tenor of our age ... It’s thrilling to witness a poet who was once told he shouldn’t write about blowjobs so that his poems could be \'relevant to a larger community\' and who still \'hate[s] how helpful [he is] even when not asked\' writing about whatever the fuck he wants. This book is characterized, in part, by Smith’s compelling confidence—even (or perhaps especially) when it’s his self-loathing that he’s confiding ... Though The Book of Daniel is a less bleak collection than his previous one—and I don’t use bleak pejoratively here—it doesn’t shy away from his most difficult subjects: the trauma of homophobia, both past and present; his fraught relationship to sex; the specter of suicide ... I admire Smith’s refusal to serve up the tidy narrative his audience might crave.
Garth Greenwell
RaveThe MillionsWhat Belongs to You commits itself to revealing how our desires are forged in our early moments of rejection, frustration, and punishment, how even as we grow up and into lives in which we might be free to pursue our desires in whatever form they take, we are never truly free. We do not shape our desires so much as they shape us.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
