So I had all these poems and I said let me see what I’ve been writing about and all of a sudden I have all these poems about friendship. RRE: Where did the frustration come from?ĭS: I think I kind of stumbled into the collection, in the midst of working on this wayward chapbook project. So I am excited for the book to come out, and I’ve finally forgiven the book for making me write it.

There was a lot of writer’s block, a lot of feeling like crap. It was not always happy and fun mining or excavating. Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada: How are you feeling about this book being in the world?ĭanez Smith: This was, I think, the most difficult and frustrating book I’ve written so far, because of the process. Smith graciously spoke with me while they were at the laundromat and we discussed the crafting of Homie, the surprising shapes of their poems, and how paradoxes of love and violence figure in the book. I would need to spend hours cooking an elaborate feast, large enough to feed all the characters of Smith’s world-and mine. To describe how deeply this book affected me I would need to sing. “With yo ugly ass,” Smith writes in “acknowledgments,” “at the end of the world, let there be you/ my world.” Tenderness, in these poems, is wedded to insult, love to violence. The poems in this book are surprising and fervent, emerging from all the joys, sorrows, and complexities of friendship, intimacy, and desire. Danez Smith’s third full-length collection, Homie, contains all the love and magnanimity that the poet-author of the National Book Award finalist collection Don’t Call Us Dead-is capable of.

Homie by danez smith