2014 Button Poetry Prize Winner

“These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make ‘a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.’ That’s no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith’s way—saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats.”
—Marcus Wicker

“Danez Smith’s BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America.”
—Rain Taxi