News at Eleven: "I got my introduction to poetry by

getting up on stage and doing it, and there was always a mix of people in the audience—ex-cons, people who bag groceries in the supermarket, people with kids. There's something in poetry for just about everybody," she [Patricia Smith] says. The eclectic mix matters. "It's easy to kind of huddle around other people who are doing what you're doing and feel safe."

Safe is not Smith's flavor. Her poems employ a vast range of personae: child molesters, gang members, politicians, even storms (Katrina revels in "The difference in a given name. What the calling,/the hard K, does to the steel of me,/how suddenly and surely it grants me/pulse, petulance. Now I can do/my own choking".)

from Chronogram: Eye of the Hurricane

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