Great Regulars: In her new volume, "Blood Dazzler,"

a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry, Patricia Smith brings an incantatory brilliance to the horror of that hurricane and our nation's shameful response to it.

This is an awesomely alliterative book. Smith, who is a slam poet champion, makes her lines seethe and bulge like high-pressure fronts. For her, the storm is elementally female.

from John Freeman: Star Tribune: Awful beauty

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The lesson of [John] Leonard's writing is that how you say a thing matters. Independence, in his mind, was a given. If you didn't have it in one publication, work for the next guy. More importantly, however, if you weren't up to the task of embracing a book's challenge, of taking on its most serious concerns in language as carefully tuned as that which you purported to critique, then you might not bother writing at all.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: Books blog: John Leonard's critical example

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