18 pages • 36 minutes read
Danez Smithalternate names for black boys
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Darkness and the Color Black
The color black functions as an extended metaphor for the boys in the poem. As “black” is the only descriptor for the boys in the title, it announces the poem as an account shaped by racial identity. Several items listed are literally black in color. Coal, before it has been burned, is black. Night is black, and black soil is good soil. The idea of the color black melds in with a motif of darkness, but rather than being frightening or mysterious, these images of darkness evoke beauty: a “summer night” (Line 2), “oil heavy starlight” (Line 6).
Blackness and darkness are never negative things in and of themselves; they become somber when inserted into a somber narrative. The black in “black veils” (Line 11) is a neutral term on its own, but the two words together combine with “shovels” (Line 11) and become a burial scene. Violence is what makes black grim; not black itself. The opposite of light and goodness in this poem is notably not darkness, but absence. “[G]one” and “blank” are void even of color, and the loss is more deeply felt for it. Carrying the metaphor through, the loss or erasure of racial identity by ignoring blackness is another form of violence.
Boyhood
The innocence and potential inherent to childhood frame the 17 “alternate names” in a specific light. In the context of boyhood, “summer night” (Line 2) and “starlight” (Line 6) have nostalgic qualities, conjuring the freedom, wonder, and naivete that characterize summer vacation adventures. Moreover, in the context of childhood, the morbid images of funerals, death, and absence denote a life cut far short. While phoenixes, fireworks, biting, and sprinting are all powerful ideas, that power becomes ironic as it is undercut by the boys’ young age: A child can only bite so hard or run so fast.
Finally, the poem connects boyhood back to the broader community by emphasizing the child’s relationships to others. The name “first son of soil” (Line 3) connotes, in part, the power of a first or eldest son, but it still relegates the subject to child status. The poem ends on a mother. This is significant in that it defines a boy by those who love him. By including those people’s pain, joy, resilience, and suffering, the poem reminds the reader that what happens to Black boys ripples far beyond the boys themselves.
Death and Survival
Because death is the result of so much racist brutality, the motif of death highlights the theme of violence and injustice. Death first appears in item 5, an inversion of the familiar phrase “innocent until proven guilty” but with a surprise ending: “guilty until proven dead” (Line 5). This disruption to the axiom, and the explicit reference to death, further accentuate the grave shift in tone. More death haunts the rest of the poem. Item 7 continues the practice of reworking phrases with “monster until proven ghost” (Line 7). Additionally, if taken out of context, the “going, going, gone” of Line 10 might evoke a winning auction bid or a home run—but in this poem, connotations of victory can only be ironic or double-edged, and they read more like gallows humor.
Rebirth is introduced in Line 9 with the image of a phoenix. This reference to myth and magic would, in most cases, offer hope—but in Smith’s poem, this is a phoenix who “forgets to un-ash” (Line 9), meaning that it doesn’t rise from the ashes and isn’t reborn. By describing a Black boy this way, Smith asserts that children, unlike mythical birds, remain dead once they are killed. Nevertheless, certain imagery in the rest of the poem evokes resilience and persistence. At the end of the poem, Black boys are named “prayer who learned to bite & sprint” (Line 17). The word “learned” suggests that these boys weren’t born knowing how to fight back and escape, but they have adapted. The word “prayer” coupled with the mother in the next line implies it is their mothers who taught them they had to defend themselves.
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By Danez Smith
