Poem-a-Day - "anti poetica" by Danez Smith

March 31, 2023

anti poetica

Danez Smith

who cares how long i’ve spent with my poems—those shit psalms those rats of my soul—head first thru the window me at their ankles demanding substance, revelation, sudden gravity—shamed of my leafless, drug shanked brain—this grey popper worn hell—that dark dull circle i try to conquer beauty & the state from within. i’m not revolutionary i’m regular. nothing radical in being the enemy of america, the country of enemies. we find our laughter between the horror. stop asking me to explain having a body & a mind & a heart—their harmonies, their plots to murder each other. i’ve lived long in a low solstice—wife of a pipe & the blue lit plain—leo trash—saved by occasional dick & the knowledge of my mother, friends i confess my pocked seasons only after their caul. arachnid moods—self-cornered—text back weak—i haven’t been much lately—the dark season lasted years, swallowing seasons, collecting itself in my shallows like a motor-sheered fish. where did the poems go? what is their trouble? what kind of water is i?

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“This poem was written as a diary entry in March 2020, at the start of this long pandemic—a time in my life when I wasn’t writing poems, as I was locked in writer’s block and a fog caused by depression and substances. With distance and difference from that season of my life, these words gained utility. I see in this now-poem myself wanting to love poetry again, seeking myself again. I hold this poem now as evidence of life’s transformations and a relic from a darker time when I learned so much about myself.”
—Danez Smith

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, Poz writer. The author of Bluff, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2024, they are the winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection from the Forward Arts Foundation. They live in Minneapolis.

Homie
(Graywolf Press, 2020)

“Untitled” by Jesús Castillo
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“We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had” by Franny Choi
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Thanks to Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Seuss’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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