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Book Title

Bluff

Subtitle
Poems
Author 1
Danez Smith
Poem Excerpt
i took the awards & cashed the checks.
i did the one about the boy when requested, traded their names
for followers. in lieu of action, i wrote a book,
edited my war cries down to prayers. oh, devil.
they gave me God & gave me clout.
they took my poems & took my blades.
Satan, like you did for God, i sang.
i sang for my enemy, who was my God.
i gave it my best. i bowed, even smiled.
teach me to never bend again.

—from “less hope”
Body
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.  
         
Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti poetica” and “ars america” to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem—part map, part annotation, part visual argument—offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love—those given and made—are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

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List Price
$18.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-64445-298-1
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
160
Trim Size
Trim Size
7 x 9
Keynote
“Danez Smith is a powerhouse of poetry.”—Literary Hub

About the Author

Danez  Smith
Credit: Anna Min
Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. They live in Minneapolis.

http://www.danezsmithpoet.com/
More by author

Upcoming Events

Danez Smith reading and in conversation about BLUFF with Rick Barot at Milkweed Bookstore

Date:
Location:
Milkweed Editions in Minneapolis, MNview map
This event is free and open to the public. Click here to RSVP.

Danez Smith reading and in conversation about BLUFF for Live Wire Portland

Date:
Location:
Live Wire Radio in Portland, ORview map
Location: Revolution Hall, 1300 Southeast Stark Street, Portland. With Blitzen Trapper. Doors open at 6:30 PM, show starts at 7:30 PM. Click here for more details and to purchase tickets

Praise

  • “I am going on record—Bluff is the best collection of the year, and the best collection Danez Smith has ever written. These are poems you are going to want to share with everyone you know, and everyone you don’t.”—Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question
  • “Composed largely in the wake of the COVID crisis and the aftershocks of George Floyd’s murder, the latest from the Minneapolis-based poet reckons with the responsibility of the practitioners of the medium to both accurately represent and challenge inaccurate representations of communities and lives like theirs.”—Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
  • “Not to be missed; sure to be one of the best collections of the year.”—Sarah Michaelis?, Library Journal (starred review)
  • “Danez Smith’s latest collection Bluff is part manifesto, part confession and self-interrogation, and part document of our nation’s ever evolving, far from new sins.”—Sébastien Luc Butler, West Trade Review
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