The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith

Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry. That alone should have you reaching for the shelf.

“Patricia Smith is the greatest living poet. Every book is better than the last.” — Danez Smith, The Guardian

This is the collection readers and critics have been waiting for. The Intentions of Thunder gathers, for the first time, the essential work from across one of the most decorated careers in contemporary American poetry. The Poetry Foundation calls her a “masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard” — and this volume is proof of exactly that.

These poems move. They traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening weight of history, and open wide toward the joyous possibilities of what’s still to come. Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic — sometimes all at once — this is poetry that radiates with the fullness of living.

Whether you’re a longtime devotee or discovering her work for the first time, this is the kind of book you’ll want to sit with on a rainy afternoon, the sound of the ocean just outside, pages turning slowly. It rewards that kind of attention.

• Longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry
• New and selected poems spanning a landmark career
• A profound testament to the necessity of poetry and witness
• Essential reading in African American and contemporary American poetry

A book that belongs on every serious poetry shelf. We’re proud to have it on ours.

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