Publishers Weekly:
“Accessible and daring . . . This book will stand out among literary records of Katrina’s devastation.”

Mark Doty:
“This riveting sequence gives voice to a wild raw whirlwind that ruined a city and brought on, in turn, a storm of neglect and murderous indifference. With her radiant powers of empathy, her fiercely acute ear for the musical possibilities of American speech, and her undiluted rage, Patricia Smith makes in Katrina’s wake a sorrowful, unflinching, and glorious book.”

Carolyn Forché:
“Blood Dazzler is Patricia Smith’s impassioned lyric chronicle of a beloved city in peril, a city whose people were left to die before us all, a people who were the heart of our country and lifeblood of our culture. After rising water, winds and abandonment, after our failure and neglect, comes this symphony of utterance from the ruins: many-voiced, poignant, sorrowful, and fierce. This is poetry taking the full measure of its task.”

Terrance Hayes:
“Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.”

Yusef Komunyakaa:
“Only an echo of the spoken-word diva lingers in Blood Dazzler, and that measured presence is what approximates a necessary passion in this poignant collection. Spiritual and gutsy, Patricia Smith’s satirical poems lay New Orleans bare, with Katrina at the driving wheel, howling and whispering her personified moments of destruction and healing. Blood Dazzler is a document of feelings, whose tinges of the blues capture an urgent witnessing through the natural empathy embedded in praise, woe, and awe.”

Also available by this author:

• Teahouse of the Almighty