Here, the defenders of the free world are not in the Oval Office, but drivers of buses and children smiling brightly with their innocence. Smith pluralizes the title “my president” at the poem’s climax, expanding and elevating a diverse cohort of souls to the highest office in the land.
& the uncle who offers him water & the drag queen who begins to hum & the boy crying on the train & the sudden abuela who rubs his back In a crescendo highly reminiscent of Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” the wordsmith continues: Here Smith repositions the political power of a president within simple social acts of solidarity, such as nodding kindly in the black quotidian fashion. & every child singing summer with a red sweet tongue is my president In a three-page anthemic opening poem, “my president,” Smith heralds the community-building of common people: For them, these everyday fortresses are found on the frontier of family, fraternity, and friendship.
Smith - they/them/theirs - celebrates unsung heroes who create safe spaces for the marginalized. Whereas lamenting poems in Don’t Call Us Dead, such as “summer, somewhere” and the viral “dear white america,” detail a black afterlife beyond this troubled planet, Homie is anchored in the homie heaven here on earth, in neighborhoods, churches, and kitchens. If Smith’s previous book Don’t Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize, is a rumination on the ruination of black bodies, then Homie heralds the redemptive power of black friendship. This book is really titled my nig.” Indeed, a second title page announces: “my nig / poems / Danez Smith.” Which raises the question: how are we meant to read this charged word that Smith stylistically summons in a work deeply concerned with solidarity and survival, friendship, family, and the frailty of the body and its blood? For starters, the title unapologetically alerts us to the collection’s wider magnanimous project: who these poems are for. As the National Book Award finalist confirms point-blank in a note on the title: “this book was titled homie because I don’t want non-black people to say my nig out loud. DANEZ SMITH’S LATEST poetry collection, Homie, is actually not titled Homie at all.
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