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.
Where Homie was ecstatic, Bluff is grimly vatic ... But the main shift, I think, is a deeper, more exacting one; and I think it may be a signal one in American poetry, one we’re privileged to witness ... In these searching, stunning poems, Smith metaphorizes city into body politic, showing us the interstate running through all our hearts.
Smith writes out of the intensity of the moment, while seeking to trace a line back to the past — not because it can provide answers but because it cannot ... Smith is writing in a world on fire, the flames unquenchable, with the ignition point deep in our collective past ... Writers are often cautioned not to work out of the heat of the moment, as if what gives their work its focus is a bit of space. The brilliance and beauty of Bluff is how effectively Smith does away with that idea. For them, art is not a sanctuary but a battleground, by turns necessary and useless, and never safe and clean.
An Afropessimist text ... Bluff’s vantage point is dark and original and foregrounds the historical significance of this time of racial reckonings. It’s experiential, existential and perhaps signifies a new era of politically conscious poetry that rejects ideas of individual empowerment in favour of enlightenment.
