Ostinato Vamps is Wanda Coleman's first book of poetry since the demise of her longtime publisher, Black Sparrow Press. It continues and enlarges the traits that have been her hallmark for more than three decades: a fierce adherence to the truth and a language so musical one can almost hear the blues line underneath her stanzas. Linguistically daring, lyrically breathtaking, stylistically bold, these poems both explore familiar territory and shatter stereotypes. Life is difficult, often unfair, but it belongs to the living, as Coleman reminds us in no uncertain terms. Racing...
Ostinato Vamps is Wanda Coleman's first book of poetry since the demise of her longtime publisher, Black Sparrow Press. It continues and enlarg...
Coleman's courageous, impassioned voice, defiantly affirming itself in the face of social injustice and institutional dehumanization, rings out clearer than ever in her new book, Mercurochrome. So does her sensuous, vivid, tactile "verbal mandala": "love / as i live it seems more like mercurochrome / than anything else /i can conjure up. it looks so pretty and red, /and smells of a balmy / coolness when you uncap the little applicator. /but swab it on an / open sore and you nearly die under the stabbing / burn. recovery / leaves a vague tenderness...".
These high-energy, incandescent poems...
Coleman's courageous, impassioned voice, defiantly affirming itself in the face of social injustice and institutional dehumanization, rings out cleare...
The burnings from which Coleman culls her work casts a glow and unique warmth that invites the reader to sit by her metaphorical hearth, to laugh and enjoy their -conversation.- The contemplative and philosophical have entered her voice as she continues to explore the conflicts and confusions that shape the aesthetic terrain of Southern California and beyond--as she continues to grapple with cultural bias, malignant domestic neglect, poverty, and the damages of racism, yet broadening her palette of social ills to include the privacies of grief, loss and transcendence. A nominee and...
The burnings from which Coleman culls her work casts a glow and unique warmth that invites the reader to sit by her metaphorical hearth, to laugh a...
