Thanks to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for the ARC!

“there is no poem greater than feeding someone.”

So opens Danez Smith’s "Bluff," and while the line first seems to signal a bright-eyed, open-palmed collection, it quickly becomes clear that these poems are reckoning with their own futility. We’re approaching the midpoint of the 2020s, and this book feels like a shuddering retrospective as much as a fatigued look forward. It feels like one of the first poetry collections to understand the shape of the decade.

In Smith’s previous collections, I often felt that the poems were on their tiptoes, moving playfully even when broaching heavy subjects. The posture feels the same here, but the purpose has changed—that lightfootedness suggests the speaker physically straining for perspective. Almost every one of these poems is characterized by unexpectedly jagged edges—a razor blade in the candy bowl. With each successive piece, however, it becomes clear that any residual sweetness from prior books is medicinal. These poems are brutal, but they are incredible.

For example, “Minneapolis, Saint Paul” is a sprawling, immersive reflection on the weeks following George Floyd’s murder, and it’s the kind of poem that leaves a pit in your stomach and forcibly stops you at the end of each page. Readers know the history; Smith refuses to reduce it to history. This is also an incredible piece in that it retains its urgency while reinforcing it with the wisdom of hindsight. Throughout the entire collection, the poet’s concern for Black lives is deeply rooted in personhood, which sidesteps the trap of treating people as artistic props. This is a book that is politically powerful because it is so personal.

Elsewhere, though, this approach slips a bit. For example, “poem” is built around “Free Palestine” as a simple refrain, but it lacks the specificity with which Smith addresses Black lives in America—as real, individual people. After such personalized care throughout most of the collection, to read a poem about Palestine without Palestinians in it feels dismissive of their severe reality, lacking the context it needs to feel like more than a hollow, noncommittal gesture. Moreover, the apparent detachment feels incongruous in a collection that wrestles so much with the way art can distance us from real needs.

Unexpectedly, it also feels like the book begins to spiral out of control at this point, almost collapsing in on itself as political subjects begin to compound into shapelessness. This could be a critique, but I don’t think so— it aligns with how "Bluff" begins with a suggestion that poetry has its limitations. Even within the confines of a poetry collection, there are subjects that are too harsh for the form. This catalyzing failure eventually escalates into the glorious “soon.” In this penultimate poem, the speaker sounds as if they have run themselves ragged, gasping out the fevered conclusions of every poem that preceded. It feels prophetic, as if the poet is saying every fragile thought for the final time.