Teahouse of the Almighty

A National Poetry Series winner, chosen by Edward Sanders.

From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation’s premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade—a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned celebration of poetry’s liberating power.

Publication date: September 1, 2006

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 114 pages

ISBN: 9781566891936

Patricia Smith is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and the Phillis Wheatley Award from the Quarterly Black Review; Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories. Professor for the City University of New York and a Cave Canem faculty member, she lives in New Jersey with her husband, Edgar Award–winning novelist Bruce DeSilva, and her dogs Brady and Rondo.

“A rich, dense feast of poetry.”

—Hazel and Wren

“Smith appears to be that rarest of creatures, a charismatic slam and performance poet whose artistry truly survives on the printed page.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Smith writes the way Tina Turner sings.”

—E. Ethelbert Miller

“Teahouse of the Almighty is searing, honest, well-crafted, and full of the real world transformed by Patricia Smith’s fine ear for nuance and the shaking of the soul’s duties. I was weeping for the beauty of poetry when I reached the end of the final poem.”

—Edward Sanders, National Poetry Series judge

“What power. Smith’s poetry is all poetry. And visceral. Her poems get under the skin of their subjects. Their passion and empathy, their real worldliness, are blockbuster.”

—Marvin Bell

“Not many poets will make you laugh out loud, grow uneasily warm with the recognition of self, sit riveted by the sheer shock of contending with human suffering, and feel as if you are alone with her as she tells her stories. But not many poets are Patricia Smith and not many books are as delightful and moving as her splendid Teahouse of the Almighty.”

—Kwame Dawes

“These poems are so fierce and tender, so unflinching, so loud and exquisite, so carefully crafted, so important, so right-on. . . .They bear such terrible beauty. Brava to Miss Patricia Smith, who pulls poems from the center of the earth.”

—Elizabeth Alexander