Danez Smith first stole my heart with their collection 'Don't Call Us Dead'; a very famous (and rightly so) book that I assume most poet huns know of unless you have been living under a rock. It explores collective blackness and masculinity with an intense, urgent love. Homie revisits and continues reflections on these themes, but there is a *slightly* more relaxed voice speaking. A voice who assumes they are in good company, not fighting to make people listen.
Friendship as a practice and concept is one of the guiding lights of my life, so immediately that's what first grabbed my attention about this collection. These poems are celebrations of community, solidarity and trust: written for a specifically black audience, Smith doesn't try to make (white) people welcome. Just open the book to see what Homie is actually supposed to be called and you immediately feel that Smith has joyously abandoned trying to be 'appropriate' for everyone... You either a homie or you not, there isn't any tiptoeing around loyalties.
One of the most striking, touching poems for me is 'For Andrew': a long poem written for a friend of Smith's who took his own life. It conjures Andrew with such tenderness and sorrow, I never knew the man but reading the poem you really feel his humanity, the human presence. "he took himself away/ from himself, he flung himself higher/ than the oldest light I know..." ; the simplicity of language expressing such ineffable grief is haunting. I can't imagine the emotions that must have been processed in order to create a poem like this, and it shows Danez Smith not only to be a master poet, but a beautiful beautiful human being with an eye that sees people and holds them in a love like light, so we can see them too.
Poems in Homie will make you laugh on one page (Smith's poem about dogs and how Scooby Doo is actually a white supremacist hunter made me LOL) and then get goosebumps and cry on the next. There's a poem about Smith's grandmother too that I adore, along with nods to hip-hop references (Homie begins with a Lil Wayne quote- poetry book goals) and smoking weed- which I thought added a real personal element. Smith is not trying to be anybody but their sweet self, and I for one ADORE IT!!!!!
If you are interested in ideas of community, plurality, friendship, blackness, loneliness and LOVE then this is the book for you! Attempting to follow up such an iconic book as 'Don't Call Us Dead' must have been a daunting task, but I think Danez Smith has triumphed with Homie!!!!