I Am the Most Dangerous Thing

by Candace Williams

Over the course of these poems, the Black, queer protagonist begins to erase violent structures and fill the white spaces with her hard-won wisdom and love. I am the Most Dangerous Thing doesn’t just use poetry to comment on life and history. The book is a comment on writing itself. What have words done? What can words do? When does writing become a form of disengagement, or worse, violence? It is an exercise in paring the state down to its true logic of violence and imagining what can happen next. The protagonist of this book teaches the same science that was used to justify enslavement and a racial caste system. She is an overseer in the same racist, misogynistic, and homophobic systems that terrorize her. Over the course of this book, the protagonist begins to erase these structures and fill the white spaces with her hard-won wisdom and love. She kills Kurtz because Marlow doesn’t have the heart to do it. She puts her death certificate in her own words to deny the state the last word. She is queer and fat and Black and chill and angry and witty and happy and lovely and flawed and a perfect dagger to the heart of white supremacist capitalism.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Race, Queer

100 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2023

Reviews

[Malia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible

[Abigail]

A really stunning collection of poems. The only one I wasn’t able to finish was “Black Diary,” which is a series of erasures from works by Joseph Conrad. I found the formatting a little too awkward for me to read comfortably. Other than that- outstanding! And published in one of my favorite little towns in Maine.

[Connie]

Featuring ghazals, “whiteout erasure” poems, and bops, the innovative poems in this collection, comprised of three titled parts, explore gender, inheritance, violence, and survival. I found “Vows for a Herring Cove Wedding Amongst Loves and Plovers” by Williams especially stunning. I read and revisited it, admiring the rhyme of the title, how the words love and lovers live inside of Plovers, the sparse end punctuation. And its final couplet made me scoop my heart up off of the floor, “And dear Candace when did you know you’d found love? / Love is not found—love is the weaving we do each day”

from “Reflecting on Spring’s Poetry” via BOOK RIOT: https://bookriot.com/reflecting-on-sp...

[Sadifura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best poems: "THIS BOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF:", "MOMMA SAID", "PRINCIPLES OF VALUE", "THE DARK DIARY", "STATE TEST" (one of my favorites), "THEOREM", "JOHN HENRY SUFFERING AND DYING IN THE HANDS OF HIS POLLY ANN AFTER A VENTRICULAR RUPTURE RESULTING FROM OVERWORK" (one of the best poems I've ever read ever, easily in the top 5), "FRUIT", "WHEN I WAS TWELVE" (easily within the top 10 poems I've read), "BOP FOR THE BOYS SCRIMMAGING IN PROSPECT PARK", "BOP FOR A BLACK MAN CAGED IN THE CONGO AND THE BRONX", "EXPLORER", (within the top 50 of poems I've read), "AFTER THE RAIN" (within the top 40 of poems I've read), "THE DARK DIARY" (in part 2), "ON NEOLIBERALISM OR: WHY MY BLACK ASS IS TIRED" (in the top 20 of poems I've read), "BLACKBODY", "MY FUTURE/BLACK CERTIFICATE OF DEATH", "OWED", "THE DARK DIARY" (part 3), "A GOOD COP" (within the top 80 of poems I've read), "BLACK, BODY", "SPELLS FOR BLACK WIZARDS", "VOWS FOR A HERRING COVE WEDDING AMONGST LOVE AND PLOVERS" (in the top 15 of poems I've read), and "PANTHER GETS LOOSE" (in the top 100).

Beautiful book of poetry; incredibly impactful, full of feelings and subtextual and textual societal criticisms. We need poetry like this especially in this day and age.

We need more poets like Candace Williams. This is your sig. To keep writing.

[Shelton Kiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read book of poetry. It's an uncompromising exploration of race, gender, queerness, and survival.
One poem in particular, “Desk Lunch Poem,” had a profound impact on me. In a few spare lines, Williams captures the exhausting reality of labor, visibility, and survival for a Black woman in the workplace. It stopped me in my tracks. The simplicity of its language belies the weight of what it’s saying: that even the most basic acts of care, like eating, are made conditional on constant productivity. It’s one of those poems you carry with you long after reading.
The brilliance of this collection lies in how Williams refuses to separate the personal from the political. Each poem is a confrontation whether with history, with language, or with the everyday violences that often go unnamed. Yet amid the anger and critique, there’s also resilience and imagination, a sense of what liberation might look like cue "Spells for Black Wizards" another poem using real headlines from old newspapers.

[kt m · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the poem, THEOREM:
“Loss also is an accumulation.”
Every night loses its kiss; every crisis its comfort.
Empty states are real, burning things.

Some other favorites:
FRUIT: Each bite a celebration—a glory of forgetting the blood sown to pick my abundance of fruit

WHEN I WAS 12: “inflicted by these white coats who are paid per trauma”

Enjoyed QUANTA, especially “This is the paradox of wanting
and wanting to know—
even in repose, we waver
between embrace and constraint”

VOWS FOR A HERRING COVE WEDDING AMONGST LOVES AND PLOVERS:
“Love is not found—love is the weaving we do each day”

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am the Most Dangerous Thing is a book of poetry for poets with its depth and experimentation. There were moments I loved and devoured quickly, and moments I slowed down to fully take in the references Williams brings to their poems. A series of erasure poems, from headlines and legal documents, among other sources, were particularly striking. Williams’s collection is an important reflection on Black ontology and embodied trauma.

[Kasandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishingly original, brilliant, thrilling book of poetry. I dogeared a lot of pages. I don't even want to say too much about this because it begs to be read without any preconceived assumptions!

My favorite poems: Theorem, Lady, Black Sonnet (!!!), In Kingdom Hall, blackbody, Whren v. United States (erasure), A Good Cop, and Panther Gets Loose.

Very powerful and a definite keeper, this one will be recommended for years to come.

[K.C. Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every poem in this book packs an incredible punch. There are a lot of erasure poems, and a few really interesting forms, as well as a few more standard forms.

This was the last of the books I ordered from my sampling of Alice James Books poetry and I'm honestly considering the subscription option... they're representing some incredible voices. I would read more of Candace Williams' work in a heartbeat.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

~2.75

A decently strong collection but the formatting of probably half of them gave me a blistering headache so I probably took off ~.5 or ~1 just for that. Most likely would've enjoyed more if the formattings were a bit less 'jumpy'.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really stunning, especially the whiteout poems.

[Robyn]

Notables 2023 #160

[Ditte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Striking book of poems that confronts and challenges power and violent structures that uphold racism (anti-blackness specifically), misogyny, and homophobia.

[Molly]

Sealey Challenge 2024. 27/31

[Emily Simpson]

The perfect book to start 2025.