 | |
| Author | Danez Smith |
|---|---|
| Publisher | YesYes Books |
Publication date | December 24, 2014 |
| Pages | 128 |
| Awards | Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry Kate Tufts Discovery Award John C. Zacharis First Book Award |
| ISBN | 978-1936919284 |
| Followed by | Don't Call Us Dead |
[insert] boy is a 2014 debut poetry collection by Danez Smith, published by YesYes Books. [1] The book won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. [2] [3]
Smith's first poetry collection, the book's poems address body politics and the various levels of violence suffered by the poems' speakers ranging from societal to personal. It also addresses Smith's many intersecting identities as an LGBTQ black man.
The book won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares . [4] The book was also a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award. [5] Boston Globe mentioned the book in a list of the best poetry books of 2014. [6]
Lambda Literary lauded Smith's affirmation of black identity and his reflections on painful, violence experiences in his own life. The reviewer also noticed the trajectory of healing and optimism which Smith's poems embark on: "Smith shifts from associating his body with harm, to learning how to warmly embrace other men ... In [insert] boy, Danez Smith calls for a world in which black boys and men are loved. A world where they are told they are beautiful and believe it." [7]
The Rumpus appreciated Smith's adherence to the black literary tradition and his subsequent subversion of poetry as a predominantly white space and canon of work. Ultimately, the reviewer concluded "It’s a special book that cuts through the white noise of American culture." [8]
Pank observed Smith's construction of the personal and political as a simultaneous act: "In [insert] boy, Smith ignites a discussion about life as a queer person of color in today’s racially charged, orientation conscious society. Through the arteries of movement, music, and religious (or non-religious) experience, Smith allows us to imagine life from his perspective in a way that only the most powerfully evocative poetry can." [9]
Kevin Young is an American poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2021. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, Young previously served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for his 2003 collection Jelly Roll: A Blues, Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory's Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. In March 2017, Young was named poetry editor of The New Yorker.
Ploughshares is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in Boston. Ploughshares publishes issues four times a year, two of which are guest-edited by a prominent writer who explores personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles. Guest editors have been the recipients of Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, and numerous other honors. Ploughshares also publishes longform stories and essays, known as Ploughshares Solos, all of which are edited by the editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, and a literary blog, launched in 2009, which publishes critical and personal essays, interviews, and book reviews.
Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.
Thomas Sayers Ellis is an American poet, photographer and bandleader. He previously taught as an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Bennington College in Vermont, and also at Sarah Lawrence College until 2012.
Richard John McCann was an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lived in Washington, D.C., where he was a longtime professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University.
Cyrus Cassells is an American poet and professor.
Tyehimba Jess is an American poet. His book Olio received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Ellen Bass is an American poet and author. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and a Lambda Literary Award for her 2002 book Mules of Love. She co-authored the 1991 child sexual abuse book The Courage to Heal. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2014 and was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2017. Bass has taught poetry at Pacific University and founded poetry programs for prison inmates.
Danez Smith is a poet, writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are queer, non-binary and HIV-positive. They are the author of the poetry collections [insert] Boy and Don't Call Us Dead: Poems, both of which have received multiple awards, and the poetry collection “Homie/My Nig”. Their most recent poetry collection Bluff was published in 2024.
Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian American poet, novelist, and editor. He is the author of the poetry collections Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell and of the novel Martyr!, a New York Times bestseller, National Book Award finalist, and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year.
Tommy Pico is a Native American writer, poet, and podcast host.
Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows is a 2014 book of poetry by the Korean American poet Eugenia Leigh. It was well received, reviewers commenting on its themes of abuse and redemption.
Justin Phillip Reed is an American poet, novelist, and essayist, best known for his National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection Indecency.
Soft Science is a poetry collection published in 2019, written by poet and writer Franny Choi. It received positive reviews.
Aurielle Marie is an American poet and activist. Their debut collection Gumbo Ya Ya received the 2020 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry.
All the Flowers Kneeling is a 2022 debut poetry collection by American poet Paul Tran, published by Penguin Books for their Penguin Poets series. Its included pieces span topics such as Vietnamese American identity, intergenerational trauma, gender politics, and colonization. The book was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Open Book Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
As She Appears is a 2022 debut poetry collection by Shelley Wong, published by YesYes Books. It won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry.
We Come Elemental is a 2013 poetry collection by Tamiko Beyer, published by Alice James Books. The book was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry.
Don't Call Us Dead is a 2017 poetry collection by Danez Smith, published by Graywolf Press. Smith's second book of poems, it won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.