The Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

The collection of poetry put together by Patricia Smith about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina left me in shock.  Before reading these poems I had a general understanding of what happened when Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans, but I never understood the things people did during this natural disaster.  It was after reading these poems that I could finally grasp what exactly people why these things happened.  For instance I never understood as to why anyone would stay through the storm, however I then realized through the poem "Man On The TV Say" that the people had been told to leave so many times before and that some people just couldn't bare to leave all of their things behind.  For Patricia Smith to not even have been in New Orleans and written such graphic and vivid poems just goes to show that she had done a fantastic job at researching the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  In fact I didn't even know that she was not there until I was told during class, for there were so many believable descriptions of what might have happened in the storm.