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Smith Blue
In Smith Blue, Camille T. Dungy offers a survival guide for the modern heart as she takes on twenty-first-century questions of love, loss, and nature. From a myriad of lenses, these poems examine the human capability for perseverance in the wake of heartbreak; the loss of beloved heroes and landscapes; and our determination in the face of everyday struggles. Dungy explores the dual nature of our presence on the planet, juxtaposing the devastation caused by human habitation with our own vulnerability to the capricious whims of our environment. In doing so, she reveals with fury and tenderness the countless ways in which we both create and are victims of catastrophe.
This searing collection delves into the most intimate transformations wrought by our ever-shifting personal, cultural, and physical terrains, each fraught with both disillusionment and hope. In the end, Dungy demonstrates how we are all intertwined, regardless of race or species, living and loving as best we are able in the shadows of both man-made and natural follies.
Flight It is the day after the leaves, when buckeyes, like a thousand thousand pendulums, clock trees, and squirrels, fat in their winter fur, chuckle hours, chortle days. It is the time for the parting of our ways. You slid into the summer of my sleeping, crept into my lonely hours, ate the music of my dreams. You filled yourself with the treated sweet I offered, then shut your rolling eyes and stole my sleep. Came morning and me awake. Came morning. Awake, I walked twelve miles to the six-gun shop. On the way there I saw a bird-of-prayer all furled up by the river. I called to it. It would not unfold. On the way home I killed it. It is the time of the waking cold, when buckeyes, like a thousand thousand metronomes, tock time, and you, fat on my summer sleep, titter toward me, walk away. It is the time for the parting of our days.
This searing collection delves into the most intimate transformations wrought by our ever-shifting personal, cultural, and physical terrains, each fraught with both disillusionment and hope. In the end, Dungy demonstrates how we are all intertwined, regardless of race or species, living and loving as best we are able in the shadows of both man-made and natural follies.
Flight It is the day after the leaves, when buckeyes, like a thousand thousand pendulums, clock trees, and squirrels, fat in their winter fur, chuckle hours, chortle days. It is the time for the parting of our ways. You slid into the summer of my sleeping, crept into my lonely hours, ate the music of my dreams. You filled yourself with the treated sweet I offered, then shut your rolling eyes and stole my sleep. Came morning and me awake. Came morning. Awake, I walked twelve miles to the six-gun shop. On the way there I saw a bird-of-prayer all furled up by the river. I called to it. It would not unfold. On the way home I killed it. It is the time of the waking cold, when buckeyes, like a thousand thousand metronomes, tock time, and you, fat on my summer sleep, titter toward me, walk away. It is the time for the parting of our days.
- GenresPoetryAfrican American
88 pages, Paperback
First published May 18, 2011
8 people are currently reading
279 people want to read
About the author
Camille T. Dungy
28 books312 followersCamille T. Dungy (born in Denver in 1972) is an American poet and professor.
She is author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and three poetry collections, including, Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) and Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010). Dungy is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Poetry Daily.
Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Cave Canem, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and she is recipient of the 2011 American Book Award, a 2010 California Book Award silver medal, a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award, and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee. Dungy graduated from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she earned her MFA. Recently a professor in the Creative Department at San Francisco State University (2011-2013), she is currently a Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University.
She is author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and three poetry collections, including, Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) and Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010). Dungy is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Poetry Daily.
Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Cave Canem, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and she is recipient of the 2011 American Book Award, a 2010 California Book Award silver medal, a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award, and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee. Dungy graduated from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she earned her MFA. Recently a professor in the Creative Department at San Francisco State University (2011-2013), she is currently a Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 14, 2012
I should admit that I know the poet slightly--she read a poem (not one of her own) at my older son's wedding. She is as good a reader as she is a writer. She has won a number of awards, and this is the latest of her collections. The other two are provocatively titled: Suck on the Marrow and What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison. The current title has to do with a rare and endangered butterfly and an entomologist who died at the time of its discovery. The poem I keep coming back to in this collection is "Prayer for P---," a series of eight poems, reflecting on the terrible death, apparently a suicide, of a friend. Each of the eight is an acrostic, so that the first letter of each line spells out one line from the following translation of a poem by C.P. Cavafy:
The sea took a sailor into its depths--
His mother, unknowing, goes before the Virgin
and lights a tall candle
for him to come back soon and for good weather--
and always keeps her ear alert for the wind.
But while she prays and entreats her,
the icon listens, grave and sad,
knowing the son she waits for will never return.
Dungy's series of poems, so artfully constructed on this very rigid framework, are a tour de force. My review makes it sound as if all the poems in this collection are death-obsessed, but they are not. At all.
The sea took a sailor into its depths--
His mother, unknowing, goes before the Virgin
and lights a tall candle
for him to come back soon and for good weather--
and always keeps her ear alert for the wind.
But while she prays and entreats her,
the icon listens, grave and sad,
knowing the son she waits for will never return.
Dungy's series of poems, so artfully constructed on this very rigid framework, are a tour de force. My review makes it sound as if all the poems in this collection are death-obsessed, but they are not. At all.
March 20, 2021
I will definitely read more by this poet; a voice worth reading, a voice of what it is like to be alive and in love with the world and its gifts with a tinge of sadness and a heaping of what it is like to be Black in the world. Political but mediating, love poetry but full of pain, sad but joyful: these paradoxes end up being the way I want to describe these. I imagine them as straddling borders and edges that can unite us and save us with words of nature and love and being human.
PRAYER FOR P- (excerpt)
I’ll claim cartographer’s liberties. I’ll claim
omissions for the greater good. I am grateful
my imagination has been drafted for the greater good,
especially since what I mean to do is direct. I want to
be your guide. In those unknown parts, they drew danger- sea scorpions,
enormous octopi, leviathan- but also wonders, rising suns. The open sea is just that,
open. My dictionary has sixty-four definitions for the word open,
none of them defining how I feel now, my heart
a little more open because without her,
not the memory of her, the knowledge, not the insubstantial
decoys my mind sets up in lieu of her, but without the woman,
friend, her embodied body, without her this space is a little more
open…those old map makers wanted us to want,
almost as much as they wanted us to fear,
to get to the places beyond the places we know. This is the way,
how we have always found more.
THE BLUE
One will live to see the Caterpillar rut everything
they walk on—seacliff buckwheat cleared, relentless
ice plant to replace it, the wild fields bisected
by the scenic highway, canyons covered with cul-de-sacs,
gas stations, comfortable homes, the whole habitat
along this coastal stretch endangered, everything,
everyone, everywhere in it danger as well—
but now they're logging the one stilling hawk
Smith sights, the conspiring grasses' shh shhhh ssh,
the coreopsis Mattoni's boot barely spares,
and, netted, a solitary blue butterfly. Smith
ahead of him chasing the stream, Mattoni wonders
if he plans to swim again. Just like that
the spell breaks. It's years later, Mattoni lecturing
on his struggling butterfly. How fragile.
If his daughter spooled out the fabric
she's chosen for her wedding gown,
raw taffeta, burled, a bright hued tan,
perhaps Mattoni would remember
how those dunes looked from a distance,
the fabric, balanced between her arms,
making valleys in the valley, the fan
above her mimicking the breeze.
He and his friend loved everything
softly undulating under the coyest wind,
and the rough truth as they walked
through the land's scratch and scrabble
and no one was there, then, besides Mattoni
and his friend, walking along Dolan's Creek,
in that part of California they hated
to share. The ocean, a mile or so off,
anything but passive so that even there,
in the canyon, they sometimes heard it smack
and pull well-braced rocks. The breeze,
basic: salty, bitter, sour, sweet. Smith trying
to identify the scent, tearing leaves
of manzanita, yelling: "This is it. Here! This is it!"
his hand to his nose, his eyes, having finally seen
the source of his pleasure, alive.
AFTER OPENING THE NEW YORK TIMES I WONDER HOW TO WRITE A POEM ABOUT LOVE
To love like God can love, sometimes.
before the kettle boils to a whistle, quiet. Quiet
that is lost on me, waiting as I am
for an alarm. The sort of things I notice:
the bay over redbud blossoms, mountains
over magnolia blooms. There is always something
starting somewhere, and I have lost ambition
to look into the details. Shame fits comfortably
as my best skirt, and what can I do
but walkaround in that habit? Turn the page.
Turn another page. This was meant to be
about love. Now there is nothing left but this.
EMERGENCY PLAN
First we decided where to meet.
The fire was coming and I knew
what we would need: flashlights,
water, condoms, and a shot
of our imaginary son. Only, what we used to call
our peeping birds startled me into starting days
long before the city bus commenced its run.
That’s when I knew we hadn’t done enough
in case the sky fell while I was driving,
and I packed a pair of panties, matches,
some aspirin in the trunk. I secreted
trail mix, shekels, and seed to plant
after the revolution was over
and done, I made sure we remembered
where we planned to mee, taught us
to swim in case we came near water
when it decided to flood. But those damned birds
with their nesting scattered on the patio
were eventually the most reliable alarm,
and, only to level the threat, I fashioned a carryall
from the pillowcase I no longer slept on.
I filled it: tinned meat and crackers, chocolate,
a little musk so I can recall
how we smelled before this end was begun.
ASSOCIATION COPY (excerpt)
Who can help the heart, which is grand and full
of gestures? …
The whole year I spent loving him, something splendid
as lemons, sour and bright and leading my tongue
toward new language, was on the book shelf…
We make habits out of words. I grew accustomed
to his, the way they spooned me into sleep so many times.
FLIGHT (excerpt)
You slid into the summer of my sleeping, crept
into my lonely hours, ate the music of my dreams.
…
It is the time of the waking cold, when buckeyes,
Like a thousand thousand metronomes, take time,
and you, fat on my summer sleep, twitter toward me,
walk away. It is the time for the parting of our days.
PRAYER FOR P- (excerpt)
I’ll claim cartographer’s liberties. I’ll claim
omissions for the greater good. I am grateful
my imagination has been drafted for the greater good,
especially since what I mean to do is direct. I want to
be your guide. In those unknown parts, they drew danger- sea scorpions,
enormous octopi, leviathan- but also wonders, rising suns. The open sea is just that,
open. My dictionary has sixty-four definitions for the word open,
none of them defining how I feel now, my heart
a little more open because without her,
not the memory of her, the knowledge, not the insubstantial
decoys my mind sets up in lieu of her, but without the woman,
friend, her embodied body, without her this space is a little more
open…those old map makers wanted us to want,
almost as much as they wanted us to fear,
to get to the places beyond the places we know. This is the way,
how we have always found more.
THE BLUE
One will live to see the Caterpillar rut everything
they walk on—seacliff buckwheat cleared, relentless
ice plant to replace it, the wild fields bisected
by the scenic highway, canyons covered with cul-de-sacs,
gas stations, comfortable homes, the whole habitat
along this coastal stretch endangered, everything,
everyone, everywhere in it danger as well—
but now they're logging the one stilling hawk
Smith sights, the conspiring grasses' shh shhhh ssh,
the coreopsis Mattoni's boot barely spares,
and, netted, a solitary blue butterfly. Smith
ahead of him chasing the stream, Mattoni wonders
if he plans to swim again. Just like that
the spell breaks. It's years later, Mattoni lecturing
on his struggling butterfly. How fragile.
If his daughter spooled out the fabric
she's chosen for her wedding gown,
raw taffeta, burled, a bright hued tan,
perhaps Mattoni would remember
how those dunes looked from a distance,
the fabric, balanced between her arms,
making valleys in the valley, the fan
above her mimicking the breeze.
He and his friend loved everything
softly undulating under the coyest wind,
and the rough truth as they walked
through the land's scratch and scrabble
and no one was there, then, besides Mattoni
and his friend, walking along Dolan's Creek,
in that part of California they hated
to share. The ocean, a mile or so off,
anything but passive so that even there,
in the canyon, they sometimes heard it smack
and pull well-braced rocks. The breeze,
basic: salty, bitter, sour, sweet. Smith trying
to identify the scent, tearing leaves
of manzanita, yelling: "This is it. Here! This is it!"
his hand to his nose, his eyes, having finally seen
the source of his pleasure, alive.
AFTER OPENING THE NEW YORK TIMES I WONDER HOW TO WRITE A POEM ABOUT LOVE
To love like God can love, sometimes.
before the kettle boils to a whistle, quiet. Quiet
that is lost on me, waiting as I am
for an alarm. The sort of things I notice:
the bay over redbud blossoms, mountains
over magnolia blooms. There is always something
starting somewhere, and I have lost ambition
to look into the details. Shame fits comfortably
as my best skirt, and what can I do
but walkaround in that habit? Turn the page.
Turn another page. This was meant to be
about love. Now there is nothing left but this.
EMERGENCY PLAN
First we decided where to meet.
The fire was coming and I knew
what we would need: flashlights,
water, condoms, and a shot
of our imaginary son. Only, what we used to call
our peeping birds startled me into starting days
long before the city bus commenced its run.
That’s when I knew we hadn’t done enough
in case the sky fell while I was driving,
and I packed a pair of panties, matches,
some aspirin in the trunk. I secreted
trail mix, shekels, and seed to plant
after the revolution was over
and done, I made sure we remembered
where we planned to mee, taught us
to swim in case we came near water
when it decided to flood. But those damned birds
with their nesting scattered on the patio
were eventually the most reliable alarm,
and, only to level the threat, I fashioned a carryall
from the pillowcase I no longer slept on.
I filled it: tinned meat and crackers, chocolate,
a little musk so I can recall
how we smelled before this end was begun.
ASSOCIATION COPY (excerpt)
Who can help the heart, which is grand and full
of gestures? …
The whole year I spent loving him, something splendid
as lemons, sour and bright and leading my tongue
toward new language, was on the book shelf…
We make habits out of words. I grew accustomed
to his, the way they spooned me into sleep so many times.
FLIGHT (excerpt)
You slid into the summer of my sleeping, crept
into my lonely hours, ate the music of my dreams.
…
It is the time of the waking cold, when buckeyes,
Like a thousand thousand metronomes, take time,
and you, fat on my summer sleep, twitter toward me,
walk away. It is the time for the parting of our days.
June 18, 2013
More contemporary, environmental scenes than in her first two books; meditations on how we occupy the physicality of earth or body, and move it or move through it;the sadness of how we have abused as we come to love what we damage--the earth, our own body, other bodies, and the small hope in that love; the kind of meditations we can return to again and again, and I have. "How She Keeps Faith" about the coursing of the river from her origins to the encountering of the dam, yet remaining herself is exemplary. However, some offer less hope than question about human nature as in the brilliant poem,"Daisy Cutter," about cut flowers, cut lives, where Dungy asks, "What gruesome genius invents our brutal hearts?"
June 8, 2018
Camille Dungy is a genuinely cool person. I enjoy her easy way with discussion of poetry, and I love this book--dark and contemplative, with sheer enjoyment of language evident on every page.
July 21, 2023
I loved the simple, accessible prose in Dungy's Smith Blue. I found myself slowly reading each piece so I could savor the words. I connected with those poems that spoke to solitude, I particularly liked "On the Rocks" and "Five for Truth."
August 3, 2019
I am so inspired, intellectually stimulated, emotionally moved by Camille’s poetry. This collection in particular is one I shall return to time and again.
April 10, 2020
Good collection of poetry. The poems are well put together.
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January 29, 2023Carrying on, getting by.
April 16, 2024
Beautiful nature poems and elegies tinged with the backdrop of the war in Iraq. My favorite poems were "Daisy Cutter" and "Prayer for P---."
May 8, 2024
Her poems don't speak to me, and her words have a certain stagnant quality to them, lacking any flow.
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September 1, 2011What follows must be considered a preview piece and part of an ongoing story about a poet with whose work I have had a deep, longstanding, and admiring engagement:
In 2007, for the TENNESSEAN, I reviewed THE RINGING EAR: BLACK POETS LEAN SOUTH, edited by Nikky Finney, which was the first Cave Canem anthology and co-published by UGA Press. I posted the piece here, explaining that I rarely, rarely give five stars to books that are not considered canonical or by living authors; however, Finney's landmark anthology, like its successor, BLACK NATURE, edited by Camille T. Dungy, (UGA Press), WERE already canonical. Dungy, who first came to my attention through the "rogue sonnets" of WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON (Red Hen) has gone on to publish another earthy but stellar individual collection, the appropriately titled SUCK ON THE MARROW (also Red Hen, winner of the Northern California Book Award, the American Book Award, as well as a NAACP Image Award nominee), and now has re-entered my ken with SMITH BLUE (Southern Illinois Press and winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Prize).
Dungy, who served as the assistant editor for GATHERING GROUND: A READER CELEBRATING CAVE CANEM'S FIRST DECADE (University of Michigan Press, 2006) with Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte, hardly needs my endorsement when there are so many others to be found at http://www.camilledungy.com/Poetry.htm. So for the moment, I'll add only that while I'm still awaiting the arrival of SMITH BLUE, my heart soars every time I see that hawk aloft on its cover.
In 2007, for the TENNESSEAN, I reviewed THE RINGING EAR: BLACK POETS LEAN SOUTH, edited by Nikky Finney, which was the first Cave Canem anthology and co-published by UGA Press. I posted the piece here, explaining that I rarely, rarely give five stars to books that are not considered canonical or by living authors; however, Finney's landmark anthology, like its successor, BLACK NATURE, edited by Camille T. Dungy, (UGA Press), WERE already canonical. Dungy, who first came to my attention through the "rogue sonnets" of WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON (Red Hen) has gone on to publish another earthy but stellar individual collection, the appropriately titled SUCK ON THE MARROW (also Red Hen, winner of the Northern California Book Award, the American Book Award, as well as a NAACP Image Award nominee), and now has re-entered my ken with SMITH BLUE (Southern Illinois Press and winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Prize).
Dungy, who served as the assistant editor for GATHERING GROUND: A READER CELEBRATING CAVE CANEM'S FIRST DECADE (University of Michigan Press, 2006) with Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte, hardly needs my endorsement when there are so many others to be found at http://www.camilledungy.com/Poetry.htm. So for the moment, I'll add only that while I'm still awaiting the arrival of SMITH BLUE, my heart soars every time I see that hawk aloft on its cover.
May 27, 2016
Attentive, to nature, emotional nuance, and the rhythm of language. The best poems in this collection remind me of a cross between Gwendolyn Brooks and Adrienne Rich. Dung's restrained but beneath the crafted surface, she dives into intensities and contradictions, particularly those between an outwardly comfortable life and the political currents that disturb it, often without direct acknowledgment. "Prayer for P---" is a powerful lament, eulogy for a friend, concentrating on the failures of the dead woman's circle to respond to her suffering. Deep blues. "Daisy Cutter" juxtaposes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with the superficial normalcy of American life. Other favorites include "Emergency Plan" and "Maybe Tuesday Will Be My Good News Day."
January 1, 2013
Not, how much // for the lemon? Not how much / for the ivory, the leopard // the peach. (39)
She does what she does-- / presumes to be a clementine, / easy to peel (42)
Until I learned better, I'd put my tongue on anything. (47)
though her heart, brook bed, was damned, / she kept two small thieves, in their sockets, alert; // she commandeered all the rafts in her spine (57)
The cat is indecent (65)
She does what she does-- / presumes to be a clementine, / easy to peel (42)
Until I learned better, I'd put my tongue on anything. (47)
though her heart, brook bed, was damned, / she kept two small thieves, in their sockets, alert; // she commandeered all the rafts in her spine (57)
The cat is indecent (65)
September 5, 2015
I had the pleasure of hearing Camille Dungy speak to a graduate class in Early Childhood Education I'm attending. We are working on poetry and more specifically nature poetry. I could hear Camille's voice as I was reading Smith Blue and I also thought back to some of the stories she told us during class. I love reading these poems over and over again and I'm glad there's more of her work out there for me to read.
October 2, 2013
Not the biggest fan of this volume. Would've scored it lower if I didn't see her poetry reading. The poems came off a lot better when spoken, but otherwise it is a pretty difficult poetry volume (Not that I mind difficult, I just wasn't a fan of how it was written overall).
July 24, 2012
Review at my Iowa City blog.
June 21, 2014
Camille Dungy's poetry makes me wish I could write poetry. Smart, precise, beautiful use of language and ideas.
December 31, 2015
Really good collection of poetry. I love the looks at nature and loss and reinvention.
Read
May 20, 20235 stars...if only for "Prayer for P--" phenomenal poetry.
Read
February 8, 2019Episode 167:
4. Hi ladies! Thanks so much for all the bookish fun!
I’m looking for a book of poetry as a gift for my spouse. They like Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Paul Celan, and other lyrical poems about the human condition. Themes of love and inspiration are ideal but not required. I would prefer to support a living poet, and appreciate any recommendations!
Thanks!
-Lindsey
Recommended by: Jenn
4. Hi ladies! Thanks so much for all the bookish fun!
I’m looking for a book of poetry as a gift for my spouse. They like Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Paul Celan, and other lyrical poems about the human condition. Themes of love and inspiration are ideal but not required. I would prefer to support a living poet, and appreciate any recommendations!
Thanks!
-Lindsey
Recommended by: Jenn
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews