“Patricia Smith is the greatest living poet. Every book is better than the last.” —Danez Smith, The Guardian
A collection of the finest new and selected poems from one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary poetry, a “masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard” (Poetry Foundation).
The Intentions of Thunder gathers, for the first time, the essential work from across Patricia Smith’s decorated career. Here, Smith’s poems, affixed with her remarkable gift of insight, present a rapturous ode to life. With careful yet vaulting movement, these poems traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening revelations of history, and disclose the joyous possibilities of the future. The result is a profound testament to the necessity of poetry—all the careful witness, embodied experience, and bristling pleasure that it bestows—and of Smith’s necessary voice.
Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic, The Intentions of Thunder stunningly explores the fullness of living. The inimitable poetry of Patricia Smith radiates in The Intentions of Thunder—reaffirming Smith’s place as one of the indispensable poets of our time.
About the Author
Patricia Smith is an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. She is the author of nine acclaimed books of poetry, including Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2018 NAACP Image Award; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, Smith is a creative writing professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a former distinguished professor at the City University of New York. She lives in New Jersey with her husband.
Praise For…
Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Electric Literature
"Patricia Smith's The Intentions of Thunder chronicles America's traditions, tragedies, and triumphs with steadfast invention. Every book since her groundbreaking debut has been a fusion of form and feeling. Her work redefines the relationship between spoken and written poetry. These new and selected poems are personal while communal; immediate while historical; demonstrative while sublime. In The Intentions of Thunder, language itself becomes weather—charged, clarifying, and resounding, a form of resurrection and survival." —National Book Award Judges' Citation
"Smith’s work is like the God-clap announced in its title, both familiar and utterly unfathomable in the intricacies of its raw power . . . The Intentions of Thunder is a magnificent collection that allows us to marvel at the intricacies of Smith’s work while feeling its fundamental, powerful truth resonate deep in our bones." —The Indianapolis Review
"Smith’s astonishing volume of selected and previously uncollected work reveals memory to be an act of defiance and love in poems that resurrect past voices and rejoice in the spirit of Black joy. It’s an unforgettable offering from one of the most important voices in poetry." —Publishers Weekly
"The Intentions of Thunder is much like its author: abundant, brilliant, and unprecedented. Each book’s selections are introduced in rhythmic vignettes, which add surity to the impression that as time went on, poetry’s possibilities multiplied because Smith multiplied them." —Poetry Northwest
"[Smith's] uncanny ear and powerfully empathic imagination bring to life Black figures . . . Readers will find themselves forever changed by Smith’s spirited voice." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Praise for Patricia Smith
“Patricia Smith is the greatest living poet. Every book is better than the last.” —Danez Smith, The Guardian
“[A] masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard.” —The Poetry Foundation
“Smith exhibits razor-sharp linguistic sensibilities that give her scenes a cinematic flair and her lines a momentum that buoys their emotional weight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Patricia Smith is a masterful poet, performer, and pundit. And while her chosen field is the form and grace of language, her gift to the world that orbits the Black experience is truth.” —Walter Mosley, author of The Awkward Black Man: Stories
“Over the course of her career, Patricia Smith has a reputation for tackling complicated ideas, combining humor and tragedy, and bridging the gap between spoken word and lyrical prose.” —Alex Dueben, The Millions
“A lineage of formal mastery runs from Phillis Wheatley to Gwendolyn Brooks to Patricia Smith…perhaps our current grande dame of traditional form.” —Jerome Ellison Murphy, The Yale Review
“As ever, Smith expands our definitions of what poetry is, masterfully incorporating multiple senses and perspectives. This invocation across time is at the heart of a collection by a poet at the height of her abilities.” —Mandana Chaffa, Chicago Review of Books
“Her work is always timely, powerful, necessary, and at turns heartbreaking.” —Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir
“A great stage performer and a former national slam poetry champion, Smith is also a performer on the page.” —John S. O’Connor, Harvard Review
“Smith has a way of shining light into the darkness with a necessary and timely tongue of fire, challenging readers to open their eyes and face the truth.” —Kathryn de Lancellotti, The Bind
“Exuberant, sharp, and questing in [her] search for understanding of the fatalities that besiege black life in America…a poet of immense originality.” —Major Jackson, author of Roll Deep and Leaving Saturn: Poems
“Patricia Smith’s work is direct, colloquial, inclusive, adventuresome.” —Gwendolyn Brooks
“Brava to Miss Patricia Smith, who pulls poems from the center of the earth.”—Elizabeth Alexander
“Patricia Smith writes poems full of risk and courage, thick with pain and alive with insight and humor. . . . the gift she presents to us is truly, truly priceless.” —Kwame Dawes
“There’s no one like Patricia Smith, and her bold, necessary poems light up the American twentieth century in all its song and sorrow.” —Mark Doty
“Patricia Smith is writing some of the best poetry in America today.” —Sapphire
