Danez Smith writes for the page and the room at once

Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a long sequence imagining an afterlife for Black boys killed by police. It is the most-discussed poem in the book and not the best one.

The poem to start with

dinosaurs in the hood. It is a pitch for a film, delivered as a poem, and it is very funny for about two thirds of its length. Then it turns, and the turn is what the poem was built for.

Starting there is better than starting with the opening sequence, because it shows the range first — humour, anger, and formal control operating together.

The performance question

Smith is a performance poet as well as a page poet, and the collection is unusual in working fully in both modes. Some poems use white space and typography in ways that only exist on the page. Others are clearly built for breath.

That dual construction is deliberate and it is the reason this book matters to an argument the form keeps having about whether spoken word is lesser. It plainly is not.

The second half

Turns to living with HIV, and the register changes — more intimate, less public, formally quieter. Several readers find this the stronger half, and we would agree.

The practical note

Contemporary, direct, no classical scaffolding required. Content includes racial violence and illness, handled without distance. Around 90 pages.