The Weather That Kills

Author: Patricia Spears Jones

Publisher: Coffee House Press (1995)

“It is through books like Patricia Spears Jones’s The Weather That Kills that I know American poetry at the end of this century has begun its slow turn back to relevance. She has given us a world where music and brains are allowed to co-exist with instinct, where the lyrics and the literal may dwell without eyeing the other with suspicion. It is a tough, honest, even humorous universe filled with the details we known and feel but weren’t expecting to encounter. Give this book to the person who believes that printed poetry lack the power to grab the lapel and turn the head.” 

–Cornelius Eady

“Patricia Spears Jones’s poems are like homecomings—in her pages the sights and smells, rhythms and caresses of many lives waft up from Memphis and Manhattan. . . . That heart charts its path home by her map of weather that kills and springs that heal. She deserves a wide audience and a place among the well-loved poets of my generation.” 

–Thulani Davis