I’d like to invent or order up new adjectives to describe the startling originality and ambition of Smith’s work. I’d like to unwrap some brand-new words, oddly pronged words, to convey their wary intelligence and open heart ... These poems emerge from places of paradox, and are animated by the spirit of the dozens, where deep love can be best conveyed through imaginative insult ... The radiance of Homie arrives like a shock, like found money, like a flower fighting through concrete ... Each poem feels like a maze designed to take the poet and the reader to some new destination, some new understanding. Smith applies shocks to the language, twists tenses at will ... Smith got their start in spoken word, and their work has always retained the intimacy and directness of performance ... This is a book full of the turbulence of thought and desire, piloted by a writer who never loses their way.
...a rapturous cry for all their friends and lovers in the profoundly moving collection ... Smith writes with both power and precision, and their poetic forms are as diverse as their topics. Homie teems with stream-of-conscious prose poetry and in equal measure gleams with lapidary stanzas of more formalized verse ... Smith is also a master of shape poetry, pushing words around the page in ways that are novel yet somehow essential to the flow of language ... As much as the collection is grounded in love, there's a hard-won ferocity in belonging, even moments of violence ... The collection is filled with passion and humanity and demonstrates why Smith has been called one of the best poets of their generation.
...by hiding the real name of the book, Smith only makes it available to those who take the time to read it. If the poetry were less earnest, this could come off as a gag—just another conceptual stunt. But the writer’s commitment to making black life visible while simultaneously expanding blackness’s scope when people are looking imbues this title with a different weight ... In its plainspoken yet voluminous vocabulary, its full-scale embrace of the body, and its ecstatic rendering of everyday life, Smith’s distinctive song of the self inevitably recalls Whitman ... Smith’s writing presents an identity tempered by a society that is slow to administer acceptance. Smith is a poet of profound abundance and empathy, and in this collection the moments that stay with you the longest are the ones that reflect on abandoning the socialization of a prolifically cruel world.
Perhaps this is one of Smith’s grandest talents: diving into the pool of a poem at one angle (for example, 'my president,' in the singular sense) only to emerge in a new framework (the multitudes of presidents) that makes us see poetry and its meanings anew ... Homie is full of humor and hugs, it’s also heckled by haunts, alive and dead ... profound poetics ... In its cutting compassion, Homie is as much a celebration of loved ones’ lives as it is a lament for their loss, equally a war cry for kinship and the burial dirge after the battle. The collections rings as a heartfelt call to love our beloveds as if they’ll be gone tomorrow, because they just might be. Yet Smith teaches us that one thing is still certain for today: in our homies, despite our most harrowing of hurts, we can always find the hope of healing.
No one does it quite like Danez Smith. That’s it. That’s the review ... Danez Smith doesn’t just dance to the beat of their own drum; they slaughter magical animals of oppression with their hands, dry and stretch their skins, build the drums, call everyone together for a party ... Homie, which is the title of this book only for the uninitiated, is a celebratory dance, a slap in the face of complacency, and an invitation to a revolution. It’s also a superb collection of poetry from one of the most interesting and unique voices in contemporary literature ... There isn’t a single throwaway poem in Homie ... Danez’s is the kind of in-your-face poetry that revels in celebrating Otherness, that screams about the realities of the poet’s positionality ... This is an elegant collection rocking short shorts; a fun read that’s extremely serious. Go read it.
Homie does not just meet expectations. It shatters them ... Smith is at their absolute best, technically and narratively, throughout their third collection, experimenting with form and turning convention on its head ... Every page holds something worthy of celebration ... the sweetest gift.
In these streets, in these homes, with these homies, a hug, a strike, a verse, are all prayers and vows: to live, to love, to leave a mark. In a time when so many people are under attack, when so many of us are feeling emotionally and physically under attack, Smith extols the values of friendship. Indeed, the epistolary form they employ, and the frequent use of the second person, offers an engagement that deepens the intimacy the reader feels. Could I be one of Smith’s homies? I would like to be. The relationships in Homie are relationships that are honest, complicated, supportive, and unforgettable, honoring the ones who’ve been lost. In this fraught world—which has become even more dangerous as this essay has been written—it is our homies who will help us survive. Smith’s poems are fierce love letters to them, and in the heady pleasure of reading them, to us.
... a soaring tribute to black and queer friendship ... Smith deftly uses the line break to dramatize other transformations that enable lives to remain livable even when marked by trauma ... With their signature braiding of rage and love, Smith celebrates the particularities of African-American friendship ... While their poems are bursting with love, Smith is frank about their rage ... bursts of anger allow Smith to celebrate the creativity of black friendships without mollifying narratives that the joy of solidarity undoes the trauma of racism.
Danez Smith’s poetry feels like breathing. Their newest collection, Homie, feels like coming up for air when you didn’t know you were under water. Their words are specific, funny, glowing with a truth that seems like it has never been said in quite the right way before they said it ... Homie is expansive, big enough to hold a vast mosaic of emotion and style, of life and death, of survival and resilience, of pain and joy. Smith’s skill lies in their ability to convey entire universes in the syntax and arrangement of a few words ... Language is Smith’s gift, and Smith is a gift to language. Homie will not disappoint fans of their electric work, and will likely bring many more readers their way.
Danez Smith’s newest collection, Homie, takes their readers on a dazzlingly divine, chaotic, radically loving, and politically astute hang-out ... Smith observes the world around them with a sense of beautiful kindness ... Smith creates solidarity amongst marginalized people and their ancestry by forging a table and then giving a seat to everyone worthy. There is a comforting kindness that they bring with the words. It’s silly, campy, but teeming with truth ... Community and love can even be found in mourning and change, at least in their poems, ‘happy hour’ and ‘waiting on you to die so I can by myself.’ These poems, which resonated with me the most, exist in the book back-to-back, and I am thankful for that. They follow a tenderness, a swallowing that is hard to describe ... Smith goes on to tell harsh truths about love, friendship, HIV, and cancer. By taking an honest look at these relationships and issues that affect many people’s lives, they create a welcoming feeling for their readers. If you didn’t before, you should feel welcomed now.
...as dazzling as it is bighearted ... a love-drunk ode to and celebration of Black culture, queerness, and the redemptive power of friendship ... Dynamic, breathtaking, and utterly brilliant, these poems are not only most magnificent weapons but also salves to share and songs to shout at the top of one’s lungs.
[A] series of praise poems for a specific audience. That audience is comprised of friends; not just any friend, but the type of friend who stands by you when things are terrible and when you celebrate. This is significant when we consider how there are so many poems that focus on trauma while very few people ask why trauma is compelling, and how do people survive on a day-to-day basis ... With each poem, we glimpse a life, whether it be black, queer, or an HIV-positive life, we are looking at a life, and how other people help us stay alive ... Even if these poems function as their own separate bodies, they commingle to offer a deep understanding of how friendship creates possibilities for survival, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
...an electrifying, unabashedly queer ode to friendship and community ... exuberant and mournful ... Smith is a visionary polyglot with a fearless voice.
