16 pages • 32-minute read
& even the black guy’s profile reads 'sorry, no black guys'
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
Smith’s poem is written in free verse in one unrhymed stanza with no metering or line breaks. The form allows for a conversational, informal voice to come through, and the voice's stream-of-consciousness reflections adds to the highly personal and candid tone of the poem.
Repeated Structure/Anaphora
Even though “& even the black guy’s profile” is a prose poem that departs from conventional poetry forms, Smith still includes repetition and anaphora to establish both rhythm and structure throughout the short piece. As a tightly confined single stanza poem, “& even the black guy’s profile” builds on itself with repeated words and phrases: “&” is repeated in the title and five times in the text (Lines 3-5) of the poem, while “you” is repeated six times in the second-to-last and final statements of the poem (Lines 3-5). These repeated words help build an internal tension and rhythm to an otherwise open form poem.
While traditionally anaphora includes the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of multiple lines in the poem, Smith uses this poetic device to build the initial calls to action. The first two statements of the poem begin with “imagine” (Line 1, 2) followed by a scene of some kind. This particular type of repetition is often used to layer meaning; in the case of “& even the black guy’s profile,” Smith’s intent is to enmesh several related images together for the reader as they build a sense that the subject of the poem is yearning to be something they are not.
Point-of-View: Second Person
The use of the second person perspective is a critical literary device in Smith’s “& even the black guy’s profile.” By using “you,” Smith establishes the direction of the narration as being towards the Black man whose profile says “sorry, no black guys.” Using second person also calls the reader into the stance of the subject, identifying the reader with the queer, Black men in the poem.
The use of second person narrative also precedes any first-person narrative in the poem; in this sense, the value of the subject becomes privileged over the narrator's perspective. This is emphasized in the final phrase of the poem, in which the narrator describes themselves as also “beautiful” (Line 4). Smith skillfully uses these shifts in perspective to build the depth of meaning in the poem without losing the reader.
Lack of Capitalization
Despite having relatively conventional punctuation use, Danez Smith avoids almost any capitalization in “& even the black guy’s profile.” The title, the beginning of each sentence, and the words “I” (Line 5) and “black” (Title; Line 5) are all left lower case. There are many possible interpretations of this authorial choice, but one specific instance makes a single analysis most likely.
One word towards the end of the poem, “Clorox” (Line 4), is left capitalized. While capitalizing Clorox as a proper noun–the name of a brand–is considered grammatically correct, so is the capitalization, for example, of the beginnings of sentences, so one cannot read this as solely an adherence to grammar. Rather, this highlights Smith’s emphasis on the ways that a racist system forces Black people, and Black men in particular, to view themselves as less than and less desirable. Clorox is positioned as an object of affection for the subject of the poem who hates the color of his skin; it is capitalized to center its importance to the subject’s sense of the world and himself.
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