Reader Score
87%
87% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 5 reviews on
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY
FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NAACP IMAGE AWARD FOR POETRY
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE 2025 MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
"Smith's searing fourth collection (after Homie) offers a powerful self-indictment of art and the artist in an age of social and political collapse."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Not to be missed; sure to be one of the best collections of the year."--Sarah Michaelis, Library Journal (starred review) "Smith reminds us that the poem is still a border where the state actively works, a cage that has limits, and can just as easily be intentionally restricted."--Diya Abbas, The Adroit Journal "I am going on record--Bluff is the best collection of the year, and the best collection Danez Smith has ever written. These are poems you are going to want to share with everyone you know, and everyone you don't."-- Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question "Smith's fourth full-length collection arrives in August and looks to be a restless, passionate admixture of forms, a chopped-up sonnet, prose vignettes and political commentaries, a long poem about the Rondo neighborhood in Smith's native St. Paul."--David Woo, Literary Hub "A writer who asks as much of themselves as they do of the reader, Smith uses the full complement of their artistic toolkit in Bluff: essays, hybrid forms, wit, visual art, reportage, and an expansive empathy. It is often too much to keep asking the same people to be bold in their work, but there are never enough words to praise someone's choice to keep being honest in public. Among other superlatives, Bluff is a test case in poetic Truth with a capital T."--Aileen Keown Vaux, The Rumpus "Bluff is a sharply-focused feat, meditating on grief, home, the next world--both here and thereafter--and most unexpectedly, guilt. . . . Bluff is the reckoning we've been looking for."--Henry Hicks IV, The Brooklyn Rail