SHOULDA BEEN JIMI SAVANNAH
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Winner:
Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets
Rebekah Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress
Phillis Wheatley Book Award
“With equal parts art, attitude, and heart, Patricia Smith’s Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah braids together personal narrative and a collective cultural journey. In poems propelled by voice and verve, she moves through the urbanscapes of Chicago and Detroit—conjuring first love and Motown with equal fervor. Her poems simultaneously zip along the textured surface of these worlds and plunge to the soul-depths of the people who inhabit them. And we, her spellbound audience, follow in her sonic wake, grateful to be part of stories so alive with detail and urgent with anguish and purpose.” — Gregory Orr, judge, 2014 Lenore Marshall Prize
Praise
“…we, her spellbound audience, follow in her sonic wake, grateful to be part of stories so alive with detail and urgent with anguish and purpose.” —Gregory Orr, 2014 Lenore Marshall Prize judge, author Selected Books of the Beloved
“Smith turns her attention, her passion, her fierce sonic powers. to Motown, that aural mirage, the shimmering promises inherent in every wall of horn, every slick choreographed / swivel . . .’ Here is one of our essential poets at the top of her form, bristling with energy and fire, praise and outrage.”
— Mark Doty, T.S. Eliot Prize winner, author of Deep Lane
“In Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, part elegy to things past, part epic poem of migration and the planting of roots, part anthem to Chicago, to family, to the deepest unspeakable secrets of a girl’s coming of age, Patricia Smith is at her best, and the gift she presents to us is truly, truly priceless.”
—Kwame Dawes, Poet Laureate of Jamaica, award-winning author of more than 30 books