I did not expect to read a poem like Sideshow by Danez Smith. But as a psychology major and someone who struggles with mental health issues I feel this is a really important piece. Among teenagers in particular, while 13% of deaths in teens are due to homicide, 11% of deaths are attributed to suicide. One might argue some of the accidents that make up 48% of deaths in teens could be intentional, or perhaps reckless, sometimes it’s difficult to know.
Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys
killing each other to pray for the ones who do it
with their own hands?
Homicides get plenty of airtime on television, and much legislation aimed at crime reform focus on the issue. Suicides are often not talked about, partly for good reason. It is believed giving too much attention to the act can influence others to copy. But aside from news coverage, mental health issues do not receive enough funding or public attention. Stigmas and barriers prevent people from addressing chronic problems. I love that Smith decided to protest how these issues are often set aside. Suicide is almost as much of a problem for teens as the threat of homicide and it should be given more attention.
I think Dinosaurs in the Hood is equally wonderfully surprising. Smith is able to get a message across of protest, of I-am-not-content-sitting-in-the-box-you-made-for-me in what I think is a really cool way. The poem is describing something that should be so easy, a dinosaur movie! But Smith wants to make sure to keep out tired typecast characters.
Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives,
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
Fuck that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene
where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit
about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes.
Smith is having none of this thank you very much. We see the same characters in different movies, ignoring how complex life really is. This allows others to continue to put others in boxes, their perceptions need to be challenged. So Smith wants to see
the little black boy
on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless
his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.
Katthryyn,
ReplyDeleteYour highlight on mental health and suicide made the work of Smith tangible, it makes the story real, makes the lines bounce of the page and into reality.
the first stanza that you quoted resonates with me as well. the kicker is that killing/ committing homicides w/in your community is suicidal in the sense that it begins to limit the freedom of the individuals w/in the group and breeds the concept of violence being the way out of pain and suffering.
However I can neither shame nor blame folks for how they react to systemic oppression...
Thank you for this post, Kathryn!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you bringing in your knowledge of psychological statistics to Smith's piece. What I really loved about "Sideshow" was the way he brought together the collective and the personal, how the act of killing a brother in the streets is the same as killing oneself. I hadn't thought of how the media doesn't highlight suicide as much because it might drive others to copy the action--this does change the way I read the poem.
I love this post! The mention of mental health issues opened my eyes to look at Smiths work differently. Thank you for this insight and you're right we should look deeper not at violence, but how violence effects others and what that leads to. That naunce is very important to be personally and I'll have to reread this work again to get immersed in it. As a society we should deal more with mental health and protest against the lack of attention paid to it
ReplyDeleteYour mention of Mental Health as an issue in these poems spark compassion instead of condemnation. There's such a melancholy tone in this Smith poem, so different from Dinosaurs. But each is an attempt to escape and to rewrite trauma which i think you capture well.
ReplyDeletee