Winner of 2013 Wheatley Book Award in Poetry
Finalist for 2013 William Carlos Williams Award
Winner of 2014 Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry
Patricia Smith is writing some of the best poetry in America today. Ms Smith’s new book,Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, is just beautiful—and like the America she embodies and represents—dangerously beautiful.Shoulda Been Jimi Savannahis a stunning and transcendent work of art, despite, and perhaps because of, its pain. This book shines. —Sapphire
One of the best poets around and has been for a long time. —Terrance Hayes
Smith's work is direct, colloquial, inclusive, adventuresome. —Gwendolyn Brooks
In her newest collection, Patricia Smith explores the second wave of the Great Migration. Shifting from spoken word to free verse to traditional forms, she reveals that soul beneath the vinyl.
Patricia Smithis the author of five volumes of poetry, includingBlood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, andTeahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. She lives in New Jersey.
“Patricia Smith’s dazzling new book sings Chicago and Detroit, the midcentury migration of African American families northward (They say it’s better up there . . .), to cities both harsh and alluring, cities that offer and withhold, raise hopes and dash them at once. Above all, Smith turns her attention—her passion, her fierce sonic powers—to Motown, that aural mirage, the shimmering promises inherent in ‘every wall of horn, every slick choreographed / swivel . . .’ Here is one of our essential poets at the top of her form, bristling with energy and fire, praise and outrage. There’s no one like Patricia Smith, and her bold, necessary poems light up the American twentieth century in all its song and sorrow.̶l,
![Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/7/7/6/2_147340.jpg)