WINNER OF THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY

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

A collection of the finest new and selected poems from one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary poetry, a “masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard” (Poetry Foundation).

The Intentions of Thunder gathers, for the first time, the essential work from across Patricia Smith’s decorated career. Here, Smith’s poems, affixed with her remarkable gift of insight, present a rapturous ode to life. With careful yet vaulting movement, these poems traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening revelations of history, and disclose the joyous possibilities of the future. The result is a profound testament to the necessity of poetry—all the careful witness, embodied experience, and bristling pleasure that it bestows—and of Smith’s necessary voice.

Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic, The Intentions of Thunder stunningly explores the fullness of living. The inimitable poetry of Patricia Smith radiates in The Intentions of Thunder—reaffirming Smith’s place as one of the indispensable poets of our time.

BIO

Patricia Smith is an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. She is the author of nine acclaimed books of poetry, including Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2018 NAACP Image Award; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, Smith is a creative writing professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and a former distinguished professor at the City University of New York. She lives in New Jersey with her husband.

REVIEWS

Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Electric Literature

"Patricia Smith's The Intentions of Thunder chronicles America's traditions, tragedies, and triumphs with steadfast invention. Every book since her groundbreaking debut has been a fusion of form and feeling. Her work redefines the relationship between spoken and written poetry. These new and selected poems are personal while communal; immediate while historical; demonstrative while sublime. In The Intentions of Thunder, language itself becomes weather—charged, clarifying, and resounding, a form of resurrection and survival." -- National Book Award Judges' Citation

"Smith’s work is like the God-clap announced in its title, both familiar and utterly unfathomable in the intricacies of its raw power . . . The Intentions of Thunder is a magnificent collection that allows us to marvel at the intricacies of Smith’s work while feeling its fundamental, powerful truth resonate deep in our bones." -- The Indianapolis Review

"Smith’s astonishing volume of selected and previously uncollected work reveals memory to be an act of defiance and love in poems that resurrect past voices and rejoice in the spirit of Black joy. It’s an unforgettable offering from one of the most important voices in poetry." -- Publishers Weekly

[H]  Scribner Book Company  /  September 30, 2025

 1.2" H x 8.4" L x 5.8" W (1.05 lbs) 352 pages