Review: Calling Your Bluff (A Review of Bluff by Danez Smith)

By Hugh Blanton

 

There are still a few places in the world where poets can land in prison for something they've written, but for the most part poetry and poets are not taken that seriously anywhere. Protest poetry has no real effect beyond the few people who read it and make generic comments on its "stunning rawness." The acclaimed poet James Baldwin, writing during a time when America was conscripting young men into a seemingly endless war, had this to say about protest literature: "[It's] concerned with theories and with the categorization of human beings, and however brilliant the theories or accurate the categorizations, they fail because they deny life." But the poets write on under the delusion that poetry is dangerous and that it can break the chains of oppression everywhere. No matter how fervently poets believe poetry can do more than entertain and inform, that's about all it can really do.

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Bluff is the latest poetry collection from Danez Smith. In line with poetry's current fashion trends it takes the obligatory shots at climate change and Donald Trump. It also often turns to gimmickry, something poets resort to when they can't marshal the necessary words to make a point. There are poems that switch back and forth between white print on black background and black print on white background, there are poems that force you to rotate the book like the steering wheel of a car with poor suspension, poems with every line footnoted, poems with the words scattered on the page as if they'd been sneezed from a flu sufferer. One poem, "ars america (in the hold)", appears to want to be a concrete poem with its convexed margins and white spaces, but doesn't quite make the grade of concrete. His poem "soon" has an entire blank page between stanzas. There's even a poem here titled "METRO" that is a QR code. Don't have a smartphone and an app? Then you ain't reading the poem.

 

CNN culture writer Leah Asmelash says we are in a golden age of poetry. In a 2021 story she does not give us examples of poems, or even excerpts of poems, that demonstrate this new golden age.

Asmelash demonstrates it by citing the number of Instagram followers poets have, telling us of Rupi Kaur's appearance on Jimmy Fallon's talk show, of Ocean Vuong's on Seth Meyers's. One can't help but wonder how poetry readers in the future will look back and quote "METRO" from this supposed golden age and if it will be anthologized alongside Shakespeare's sonnets. Or maybe Asmelash's golden age will put a tombstone on Shakespeare's verbal splendor in favor of QR codes and self-centered trauma porn.

 

Bluff is Smith's fourth collection of poetry, their previous collection Homie won the Minnesota Book Award and another, Don't Call Us Dead, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. In this collection they have no fear of contradicting themselves (Smith offers up his pronouns unbidden as they/them, if my grammar here is confusing it is due to identity politics having no regard for grammar's rules of the singular and plural). "move my mind// deeper into the dark// question of its use// & that's when the poems got dangerous." Later they give us this: "the universe most docile & stunted// weapons rounded into my words, my work// so undangerous." A common theme in the poems here is place—there are poems titled "Dayton's Bluff", "rondo" (where Smith grew up in Minneapolis), "Minneapolis, St. Paul" (Smith's capitalization is whimsical), "Colorado Springs", "Denver", "Sioux Falls".

 

The poem "Minneapolis, St. Paul" is Smith's account of the George Floyd riots—half prose poem, half right-justified verse. "i didn't know brick/ could burn i didn't know/ Wendy's was so flammable/ i loved every minute of it i pissed/ my skivvies scared i prayed/ for this then God showed up with it// i wasn't ready." Smith seems to be implying he didn't directly participate in the rioting, in fact in the next paragraph they tell us they are out with their mama and a broom cleaning up.

 

There's a difference between riot and insurrection. An insurrection leads to something new, a riot brings about nothing new. Smith wants a change:

            i don't want America no more.

            i want to be a citizen of something new.

            i want a country for the immigrant hero.

            i want a country where joy is indigenous

            as the people.

Nothing changes after elections, either, but that doesn't stop people from voting, either. The promises of politicians and burnt Walmart’s are always broken.

 

After the release of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time in 1963, Baldwin went on a national lecture tour. Time magazine described Baldwin's ideology as "between the muscular approach of Malcolm X and the nonviolent program of Martin Luther King, Jr." In their May 17, 1963 issue they said, "There is not another writer who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of racial ferment." Six decades on and there still isn't.

Hugh Blanton's latest book is Kentucky Outlaw. He can be reached on X: @HughBlanton5