Booklist review by Mark Roelof EleveldPatricia SmithSeptember 20088.9 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches, 77 pagesISBN-13: 978-1-56689-218-6Paperback: 16.00Few have navigated the waters of the poetry landscape better than diva Patricia Smith. In her newest endeavor, one of the most powerful written testaments to the tragedy and life surrounding New Orleans pre/during/post-Katrina, Smith lends her unique ear for voice and persona poems to this complex, colloquial, and thought-provoking collection. Almost a minute-to-minute account that captures the power of mother-nature and the confusion of leadership and lack of soul, Smith’s poems are painstakingly revealing and unabashedly critical juxtaposed against the beauty of her written form: short, terse free verse, formal rhymed sonnets, sestina, and more. Smith’s follow up to Teahouse of the Almighty is an accomplished command of the breath and territory Smith occupies in the poetry world. With this book, she has continued to assert her position as one of American’s critical poetic voices. As Smith writes to Katrina, so to it is the calling to this book, “Never has there been/a wind like this. Its throaty/howl has memorized/my name. And it calls, and it/calls, and lamb to ax, I come.” I saw her read here in LA in a night at the Getty, and had to buy her book. What a gorgeous gorgeous poet, passionate, exact. This book is all about Hurricane Katrina, and she can be both the hurricane itself, and a dog left chained to a tree, and everything in between. It's exactly the kind of intense condensation of feeling and fact that makes poetry the news that's always new. You can see why this was nominated for the National Book Award. Brilliant. Patricia Smith has a fan for life.
What do You think about Blood Dazzler (2008)?
A powerful collection of poetry, especially the poems written in the voice of the hurricane herself.
—omolola
I am reading this for a poetry workshop I'm taking.Simply amazing. What a great book.
—hudlana
See the author read these if you can--great performer of the persona poems.
—Nadine
