Homie
Poems
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ISBN10: 1644450100
ISBN13: 9781644450109
Paperback
96 Pages
$16.00
CA$21.00
Longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.
Reviews
Praise for Homie
“Homie does not just meet expectations. It shatters them. Smith is at their absolute best, technically and narratively, throughout their third collection, experimenting with form and turning convention on its head.”—The Poetry Question
“Profoundly moving . . . Smith writes with both power and precision, and their poetic forms are as diverse as their topics . . . Their personal style mixes modern slang with gorgeous imagery, resulting in verse as colorful and fanciful as Pablo Neruda but also savvy, down-to-earth, close to the heart . . . [Homie] is filled with passion and humanity and demonstrates why Smith has been called one of the best poets of their generation.”—Shelf Awareness
“This book reads as gospel, as righteous text that carves a religion out of friendship . . . Blessed be Danez Smith, for allowing us that closeness . . . Smith holds genius in them, and we are lucky that they choose to share it with us so abundantly.”—Fatimah Asghar
“Oh, Nezzy. The world doesn’t deserve this book—this fierce abundance, this indomitable tender—but we need it, desperately. Danez Smith has always been the most talented voice of our generation, but it’s here, in their third collection, that their virtuosic abilities are matched by the ambitiousness of their heart. Here, they’ve built a table big enough to hold all of it: the small shames that accompany grief, the ecstasy of chosen kinship, ‘your people, my people, all that has happened / to us.’ Homie is a book that takes to heart what Che Guevara said, ‘At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.’ That Danez is willing to take this risk is one of the great fortunes of my life.”—Franny Choi
“Homie is how we survive—in verse . . . For Danez, friendship is a forest ripe with foliage and possibility . . . They offer us poems of seed and breath, charging us to reimagine the world as inhabitable and safe in this skin and these bodies beckoning us back to dirt.”—Tish Jones
“A collection as dazzling as it is bighearted . . . Dynamic, breathtaking, and utterly brilliant, these poems are not only most magnificent weapons but also salves to share and songs to shout at the top of one’s lungs. A transcendent collection sure to bolster Smith’s status as a poetry icon.”—Booklist (starred review)
“An electrifying, unabashedly queer ode to friendship and community . . . Smith is a visionary polyglot with a fearless voice.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)