Big Towns, Big Talk: Poems

by Patricia Smith

Life According to Motown , Patricia Smith's first book, told of the glittery deceptions of the Motown era and the difficulties of growing up under their sway. Big Towns, Big Talk  takes a look at what happens after you've grown up.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2002

Reviews

[Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sealey Challenge 2025: 26/31

Big Towns, Big Talk has solidified Patricia Smith as one of my favorite poets. In this collection, Smith reflects on her experiences growing up during the Motown era. However, this is explored not through the lens of the music itself, but through the rhythms of culture, politics, and everyday life. Her poems pulse with the sound and swagger of the time, carrying both the joy and the ache of a community in motion.

What makes Smith’s work so compelling is her voice which linguistically and stylistically are both utterly alive on the page. There’s a playfulness in her writing, a sense of intimacy that feels like an inside joke shared between poet and reader. Her language dances, improvises, and demands that we listen closely. Reading this collection felt like being in conversation with Smith herself. She’s showing us life as she saw it, and she’s doing it with wit, rhythm, and command. The collection is both a celebration and a reckoning, a vivid portrait of a time and place that shaped her.

Overall, I think that this collection reminds us that poetry can be music, testimony, and history all at once. When I read Patricia Smith, I feel like I always have to be taking notes to reflect on later because there are just so many worlds in her poems!

[sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't like Big Towns, Big Talk as much as Blood Dazzler, but it was still incredible - a solid 4 stars! Patricia Smith is amazing!!!! definitely one of my favorite poets, so happy my English professor (who studied under her in grad school!) recommended her to me!

[Mills College Library]

811.54 S6563b 1992

[Sebastian]

First read: August 7, 2023, Monday

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm on my third book of Patricia Smiths and I love her writing. Her language comes hard and fast and I need pauses between to get my breath back. So many good lines, she writes narrative and her placement of words work. She has a poem near the end about AIDS and the search for an alternative healing Chinese Bitter Melon, which make my poem about AIDS and alternative healing seem like a piece of fluff. I still like my poem, but I love her poem, and wish I had the courage to write like her. Also, her persona poem about the skin head, that is on You Tube, is in this book. It is a killer. The way I describe poems that blow me away is killer. Patricia Smith writes killer poetry and I wish she had won the National Book Award this year for Blood Dazzler (a killer book) rather than Mark Doty. (And that probably isn't fair, since I've not read his book, but I can make a bet it won't kill me like a P.S. book does!)

[Eve Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found a first edition of this book in a used bookstore in Boston. It is an impressive collection of poetry, but the poem that will blow you away is "Skinhead" - you would never believe it is an African-American woman poet who could make you feel sympathy for a white supremacist skinhead.

[Greg]

one sassy poetess grat stuff

[Whisper Poet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect collection of poems!