Justin Danzy

Run in such a way

TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press

February 2027

A poet’s candid and probing exploration of faith, Blackness, and masculinity

With poems that closely examine familial bonds and heritage, biblical teachings, a shifting understanding of home, and the violence of toxic masculinity, Justin Danzy’s Run in such a way sits at the crossroads of religion, race, gender, and more. A collection about pursuit, tracking the narrative of its speaker’s journey toward a deeper understanding of himself and of his community as he moves from child to man, the book wrestles with the way an identity is constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed again throughout one’s life.

Playful and sincere in equal measure, Danzy’s command of the line carries us through as we travel with the speaker to the precipice of belief. Danzy’s lyrical voice and fealty to his people pays homage to the world that made him, and considers all that the speaker of this tremendous debut has—both wisely and foolishly—run toward and away from in the search for truth.

Northwestern University Press

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Matthew Shenoda, author of The Way of the Earth

"Danzy’s adeptness and precision as a poet glows in this collection. Simultaneously playful and serious, unvarnished and honest, Run in such a way is steady, sharp, and finely crafted.”

Aaron Coleman, author of Red Wilderness

“‘I hear thunder/more often than it rains. I hear rain/in the voices of my dead and the crowning…’ writes Justin Danzy in Run in such a way, and I am thunderstruck by how this daring debut merges wonder and sorrow, merges cities and desires, songs and ghosts. Merging crafts connections, yes, but it can also camouflage: it can blend or blur in ways that transform what we know, who we are.

There are equal parts destruction and creation in this spirited collection—blunt and sublime ways of seeing that look askance at conundrums of masculinity, family, race, class, and coming of age in our American mess—poems that look askance at the world, but look alive.”

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of The Flower Bearers

"Run in such a way is a vision of snare, thorn, tongue, and the endless rhythms through which language skims its wings across the darkened faces of history, memory, and body.

Danzy’s charged voice, which is lyrical and bold in its clarity, flays truth alive and offers us a singing blaze. These startling poems are immediate and revelatory, resurrecting both the past and the future into our Now."

Jane Huffman, author of Public Abstract: Poems

"Danzy’s poems are full of love, but don’t succumb to easy notions of family and place. Instead, he telescopes between the macro and the micro, the mundane and the mythic.