A few additional kind words about Teahouse of the Almighty


“Smith is a speech pathologist’s wet dream. This is hard-edged, street-wise, hip-swaying word magic. . . . One cannot look away from the necessity of these poems, their sheer urgency and risk. One feels these poems need to happen.
- Matthew Siegel, Gulf Coast, a Journal of Literature and Fine Art

“It’s been some some some some time since I’ve read a new book with quite the skill, depth, toughness, beauty and final loving hand. . . . The book arrived yesterday and I read it twice, as if there were a choice. Put this book into every hand and library.”
- Bob Arnold, founder, Longhouse Publishers

“Unflinching, undeniably intimate, and full of the hush and scream of the stage, Smith’s voice sings from every page.”
- Poetry Daily

“Now it can be said: Patricia Smith is our Gwendolyn Brooks, inspiring and firing up everywhere she goes. . . . Teahouse of the Almighty is simply great poetry, and a testament to who Patricia Smith is, where she’s been. It’s the sign we’ve been waiting for, the Book of the Year”
- Bob Holman and Margery Snyder, Your Guide to Poetry, about.com

“Blending feather-wisp feelings with knife-sharp ghetto talk, the poems mightily fuse Walt Whitman’s ‘barbaric yawp’ with the blues.”
- Diane Scharper, Library Journal

“Smith’s poetry does not simply lie on the page. It asks to be read aloud, shouted.”
- Michael Scott Cain, Rambles

“These are powerful poems that almost perform themselves on the page. . . . The element of performance is enhanced by this breathless, run-on rush of the poems, the piling up of scenes and impressions, the glittering surface of the work.”
- Janet McCann, Magill Book Reviews

“Dynamic, free-verse poetry that sublimely captures the thrills and dilemmas of the human experience.”
- Midwest Book Review

“Even read silently, her work still sings.”
- ForeWord

“Underpinning all of Teahouse is the sense of poetry as a weapon of social justice.”
- Women in the Arts Magazine“

Her poems instill a need in the reader that can only be met by the next poem.”
- The Bloomsbury Review

“Smith’s pieces are underscored by a reverence for the raw drama and passion of human existence . . . Teahouse of the Almighty is a vibrant and passionate meandering through life, its ordinariness magnified to expose its pain and exhilaration.”
- World Literature in Review

“This is a hip-swaying, heart-thumping, mouth-watering blend of hush and scream, of art and street, of flesh and muscle, that will make you drool and shiver. And so far, I’m just talkin’ ‘bout her ass.”
- Bruce DeSilva, editor extraordinaire