{"title":"Wanda Coleman","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"heart-first-into-this-ruin-the-complete-american-sonnets","title":"Heart First Into This Ruin: The Complete American Sonnets","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Fantastically entertaining and deeply engaging...potent distillations of creative rage, social critique, and subversive wit.\"--\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Terrifying and fearlessly inventive.\"--\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe first complete collection of Wanda Coleman's original and inventive sonnets. Long regarded as among her finest work, these one hundred poems give voice to loving passions, social outrage, and hard-earned wisdom. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWanda Coleman was a beat-up, broke Black woman who wrote with anger, humor, and ruthless intelligence: \"to know, i must survive myself,\" she wrote in \"American Sonnet 7.\" A poet of the people, she created the experimental \"American Sonnet\" form and published them between 1986 and 2001. The form inspired countless others, from Terrance Hayes to Billy Collins. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawn from life's particulars, Coleman's art is timeless and universal. In \"American Sonnet 61\" she writes: \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ereaching down into my griot bag \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eof womanish wisdom and wily \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003esocial commentary, i come up with bricks \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ewith which to either reconstruct \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ethe past or deconstruct a head.... \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003efrom the infinite alphabet of afroblues \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eintertwinings, i cull apocalyptic visions \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e(the details and lovers entirely real) \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eand articulate my voyage beyond that \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003epoint where self disappears \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThese one hundred sonnets--borne from influences as diverse as Huey P. Newton and Herman Melville, Amiri Baraka and Robert Duncan--tell Coleman's own tale, as well as the story of Black and white America. From \"American Sonnet 2\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003etowards the cruel attentions of violent opiates \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eas towards the fatal fickleness of artistic rain \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003etowards the locusts of social impotence itself \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ei see myself thrown heart first into this ruin \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003enot for any crime \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ebut being \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is a collection of electrifying truth that only an artist such as Wanda Coleman can deliver. ","brand":"Wanda Coleman","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793308713002,"sku":"9781574232530","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/heart-first-into-this-ruin-the-complete-american-sonnets-4058111.jpg?v=1762151134"},{"product_id":"ostinato-vamps-poems","title":"Ostinato Vamps: Poems","description":"\u003ci\u003eOstinato Vamps\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLinguistically 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 between an earthy eroticism and fatalistic despair, filled with humor and tragedy, these poems are alive. They breathe. They challenge us even as they reward us for seeking the truth.","brand":"Wanda Coleman","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793309040682,"sku":"9780822958338","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/ostinato-vamps-poems-1805550.jpg?v=1762151133"},{"product_id":"wicked-enchantment-selected-poems","title":"Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF THE YEAR'S BEST--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA voice for justice, anti-racism, and equality--here is the greatest and most powerful work of the people's poet, Wanda Coleman. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eColeman was a beat-up, broke, and Black woman who wrote with anger, humor, and clarity. \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWicked Enchantment: Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e is a selection of 130 of her poems, edited and introduced by Terrance Hayes. Rejected by the elites during her lifetime, here's what people are saying now: \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e--\u003cb\u003eOne of the year's best! \"These poems are wildly fun and inventive . . . and frequently hilarious; they seem to cover every human experience and emotion.\"--\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e--Winner, California Independent Bookseller Alliance 'Golden Poppy' Book Award 2020 \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e--\"Required Reading\" \u003ci\u003eBustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e--\"One of the greatest poets ever to come out of L.A.\" \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e--One of the year's best! \"Fantastically entertaining and deeply engaging...potent distillations of creative rage, social critique, and subversive wit.\"--\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e--\"Her work pushes us to confront injustice with as much candor as she did.\"--\u003ci\u003ePoetry\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA self-made writer from Black Los Angeles, Wanda Coleman made art while living every day with racism, poverty, violence. Her triumph is in words that endure. It's time for Coleman's courageous, impassioned, inspiring, one-of-a-kind voice to reach readers everywhere.","brand":"Wanda Coleman","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793322410026,"sku":"9781574232370","price":25.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/wicked-enchantment-selected-poems-6136344.jpg?v=1762150760"}],"url":"https:\/\/thepoetryshop.com\/collections\/wanda-coleman.oembed","provider":"The Poetry Shop LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}