Wicked Enchantment. Wanda Coleman
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Praise for Wanda Coleman
“Wanda Coleman’s peerless Wicked Enchantment is packed with more American Sonnets than I’ve been able to gather in one spot and a sparkling intro by her champion Terrance Hayes. Words to crack you open & heal you where it counts—hateful & hilarious, heartbroke & hellbent, psychologically & formally adroit. All honor to her name.”
—Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club
“A powerhouse in her time, Coleman’s work resonates in ever greater measure, in forms as diverse as blues and sonnets, making a song and sense out of suffering.”
—Kevin Young, Brown: Poems
“She taught me everything I know about sourcing female rage and intuition in writing.”
—Amber Tamblyn, Era of Ignition
“Coleman is master of telling unvarnished truths—about self, about the world, about personal past and our collective future . . . Race, disparity and the increasing complexity of race politics in this country are the knots Coleman works through on the page.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Coleman’s ability to simultaneously conjure the tactile and the abstract makes her works crackle with life and inspire multiple interpretations . . . Coleman’s aching and meditative poetry gives voice to inquiries and echoes.”
—Booklist
“A poet whose angry and extravagant music, so far beyond baroque, has been making itself heard across the divide between West Coast and East, establishment and margins, slams and seminars, across the too-American rift among races and genders . . .”
—from the jury’s citation for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bathwater Wine
“Wanda Coleman’s poetry stings, stains, and ultimately helps heal . . . these searing, soaring poems challenge us to repair the fractures of human difference . . .”
—from the jury’s citation for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry for Mercurochrome (finalist)
Also by Wanda Coleman
Mad Dog Black Lady (1979)
Imagoes (1983)
Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968–1986 (1987)
A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988)
African Sleeping Sickness: Stories & Poems (1990)
Hand Dance (1993)
American Sonnets (1994)
Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (1996)
Bathwater Wine (1998)
Mambo Hips and Make Believe: A Novel (1999)
Mercurochrome (2001)
Ostinato Vamps (2003)
Wanda Coleman: Greatest Hits, 1966–2003 (2004)
The Riot Inside Me: More Trials & Tremors (2005)
Jazz and Twelve O’Clock Tales (2008)
The World Falls Away (2011)
The Love Project: A Marriage Made in Poetry (2014)
Published in 2020 by
Black Sparrow Press
David R. Godine, Publisher 15 Court Square, Suite 320 Boston, Massachusetts 02108 www.godine.com
Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Wanda Coleman
Introduction Copyright © 2020 by Terrance Hayes
Frontispiece of Wanda Coleman by Terrance Hayes
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For more information, please write to the address above.
Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Coleman, Wanda author. | Hayes, Terrance editor, writer of introduction.
Title: Wicked enchantment / Wanda Coleman ; edited and and introduced by Terrance Hayes.
Description: Boston : Black Sparrow Press, 2020. | Summary: “Wanda Coleman-” the unofficial poet laureate of L.A.”-passed away in 2013, but her influence casts a long shadow across contemporary American poetry, including Terrance Hayes’ American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. In this first new collection of Coleman’s work since her death, Hayes has selected more than 130 poems originally written and published between the late 1970s and early 2000s”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019051008 |
ISBN 9781574232370 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781574232349 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.
Classification: LCC PS3553.O47447 W53 2020 | DDC 811/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051008
Contents
Mad Dog Black Lady
They Came Knocking on My Door at 7 a.m.
Beaches. Why I Don’t Care for Them
Imagoes