Don't Call Us Dead

Poems

By: Danez Smith

Narrated by: Danez Smith

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."

Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America - "Dear White America" - where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.

©2017 Danez Smith (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Read by author

An outstanding book of poetry read by the author. This review has to be at least 15 words long, so there .

Funny and very serious at the same time

The author reads his own story which always adds to the quality of an audiobook. A black man's perspective on life, death and a lot of other things. Excellent book! I am white, but I believe that the only way we can learn and understand others, is to listen or look to their art. Highly recommend this book.

great content and great listening experience

it is time to buy the kindle version of this collection.
this one is rich, beautiful, painful, inspiring and real

Stunning…

in heartfelt exultation…honesty…beautiful and poignant poetry…Danez’s reading…collection as a whole. He had me weeping and smiling. He had me feeling and comparing him to The Bard. That good.

Wow

Read this!
It is a very quick listen.
Some of his imagery…honestly there were a few times where I had to pause it just to sit with and appreciate some of the lines. Just BRILLIANT. And emotional. And raw. And simultaneously polished. Just an incredible work. Highly recommend.