Black Movie

by Danez Smith

Overview

2014 Button Poetry Prize Winner

"These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make 'a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.' That's no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith's way–saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats."–Marcus Wicker "Danez Smith's BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America."–Rain Taxi

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943735006
Publisher:	Button Poetry
Publication date:	07/01/2015
Series:	Button Poetry Contest Winner , #3
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	52
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.10(d)

About the Author

Danez Smith is the winner of a 2014 Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. They are the author of Homie (Graywolf), Don't Call Us Dead (Graywolf), “[insert] boy” (YesYes Books, 2014), one of the Boston Globe's Best Poetry Books of 2014, & two chapbooks– “black movie” (Button Poetry, 2015), winner of the 2014 Button Poetry Prize, & “hands on ya knees” (Penmanship Books, 2013).

Smith is a Cave Canem, VONA, and McKnight Foundation Fellow. Their writing has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal, Narrative & elsewhere. They were featured in The Academy of American Poets' Emerging Poets Series by Patricia Smith. They are a founding member of the multi-genre, multicultural collective Dark Noise. Danez placed second at the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam and is the two-time Rustbelt Regional Champion. In 2014, they were the Festival Director for the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam. Danez holds a BA from UW-Madison where they were a First Wave Urban Arts Scholar. They live in Minneapolis, MN.

Table of Contents

Sleeping Beauty in the Hood 3

Boyz the Hood 2 4

Jim Crow, Rock Star 5

A History of Violence in the Hood 6

The Secret Garden in the Hood 7

Scene: portrait of black boy with flowers 9

Lion King in the Hood 10

Auto-play 19

Short Film 20

Politics of Elegy 32

Dear White America 34

Notes for a Film on Black Joy 36

Dinosaurs in the Hood 39

Credits 43