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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Bluff: Poems

Bluff: Poems

Audio Book

General Poetry

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN13: 9798874881528
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Published: Aug 20 2024
Language: English
Awards: ALA Notable Books, Pulitzer Prize
Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.



Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language and a deep self-scrutiny. A series of ars poetica gives way to anti poetica and ars america to implicate poetry's collusions with unchecked capitalism. A poem makes clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. Another offers the history of Saint Paul's vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.



Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love--those given and made--are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

Also from

Smith, Danez

Also in

General Poetry