16 pages • 32 minutes read
& even the black guy’s profile reads 'sorry, no black guys'
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown (2015)
A contemporary Black poet, Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition” is a short poem that juxtaposes images of flowers, “Cosmos. Baby’s Breath” (Line 8) with the unjust deaths of Black men, whose names are italicized as the concluding flowers of the poem: “John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown” (Line 14). While “The Tradition” addresses a slightly different subject matter than Smith’s “& even the black guy’s profile,” the two poems share the use of contrasting imagery to confront the harsh and often fatal effects of racism on Black men’s bodies in the U.S.
“The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On” by Franny Choi (2019)
Franny Choi and Danez Smith are not just contemporaries of one other, but they are also direct collaborators in the poetry world. They have been colleagues together in the Dark Noise Collective, and for several years they have co-hosted a podcast for Poetry Foundation. In “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On,” Choi experiments with the use of prose as a structure for a poem, as well as utilizing anaphora and repetition to similar effect as “& even the black guy’s profile.” Additionally, this poem by Choi shares the use of changing point-of-view to mark the turns of the piece.
“Bath” by Amy Lowell (1983)
While Lowell’s “Bath” and Smith’s “& even the black guy’s profile” don’t share much in terms of direct meaning or content, they both are prose poems that utilize natural imagery to reflect the narrator’s thoughts and opinions. In “Bath,” the narrator smells “tulips and narcissus” (Line 1) as they enjoy a light-filled bath. For the narrator, “the day is almost too bright to bear” (Line 8). In Lowell’s poem, perhaps significantly unlike Smith’s, the use of “light” and the joy of brightness are viewed as positive and desirable aspects of the poem; this is reflective of many poems by white authors, where whiteness is implicitly desired or praised, even if this is not the direct opinion or intended value of the author.
Further Literary Resources
“‘beautiful & lovable & black & enough’: An Interview with Danez Smith” by Lauren K. Alleyne (2017)
In this interview, Smith reflects on their intentions in poetry both in terms of the content, form, and the way they approach thinking about audience. Additionally, this interview provides some interesting commentary on where “& even the black guy’s profile” fits into Smith’s larger arc of poetic work.
“Danez Smith: On [Their] New Poetry Collection, Writing the Power of Blackness” by Candice Iloh (2015)
This interview with Smith took place directly after they published their first collection of poetry and precedes the collection containing “& even the black guy’s profile.” It is a useful time capsule of Smith’s thoughts about the collection [insert] Boy, and their reflections on what “being black and gay” means to them.
“‘Least Desirable’? How Racial Discrimination Plays Out in Online Dating” by Ashley Brown (2018)
Danez Smith’s poem “& even the black guy’s profile” directly addresses racism in online dating, as does this informative interview-based article by Ashley Brown for National Public Radio (NPR). In the short non-fiction essay, Brown describes experiences of people who have experienced or observed discrimination based on race while they have attempted to date online.
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By Danez Smith
