Hand Dance.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coleman, Wanda

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Poetry.

African Americans.

City and town life--Poetry.

City and town life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Santa Rosa : Black Sparrow Press, 1993.

Summary:

Her father's fatal illness. The inner life of an urban charity hospital. "Unfinished Ghost Stories." "American Sonnets." "Dreams." This is vintage Wanda Coleman, the poet of the people. Coleman wrote as a witness. She captured her world and its truths, of life with the constants of race, fear, poverty, gender, inequality, oppression. Through it all, there is passionate love and sexuality, humor and drama -- her work is full of startling confession and breathtaking power. The Nation said of Hand Dance: "Coleman's poems are an act of liberation, meant to be experienced as something almost physical, like a punch or a whipping . . . she wants her language to express anger, to incite anger, and to shake all those who read it out of their complacency." A college dropout living in Black Los Angeles, Coleman was disregarded by the establishment during her lifetime. It's time for her work to be discovered by readers everywhere. Poet Terrance Hayes wrote, "Wanda Coleman was a great poet, a real in-the-flesh, flesh-eating poet who also happened to be a real black woman. Amid a life of single motherhood, multiple marriages, and multiple jobs that included waitress, medical file clerk, and screenwriter, she made poems. She denounced boredom, cowardice, the status quo. Few poets of any stripe write with as much forthrightness about poverty, about literary ambition, about depression, about our violent, fragile passions.".

Contents:

Hand Dance

Ethnographs

Africa

Buddha Belly

Mistah Mouse

Chair Affair

ethiopian in the fuel supplies

Poetry Lesson Number Two

The Dream

Miss Natty Ann

Like Love

Chuck Man

Blues for the Man on Sax (2)

Dr. Mungo

We Meet the Black Rimbaud

Ode for Donny Hathaway

George 1990

for the girl with cerebral palsy

Desert Mother

Heritage

February 11th 1990

Buttah

Blue Glass

Jump Song

Sex and Politics in Fairyland

Juice Money

Lovin' Breakfast Blues

The Economics of Skin

The Ashman

Dream 1812

My Show

He Takes Her to the Movies

False Spring

Small Talk About the Weather

Brief Visit to Paradise

Shit Worker in General

The Tao of Unemployment

Talk About the Money

Dream 516

Analects

Aptitude Test

Negro History 281

Hollywood Theology

Refugee from Vacaville

Colorism

Deja Fait

Essay on Language (2)

What It Means to Be Dark. to the other Wanda Coleman

with apologies

Girlfriends

Dicksboro Reflections

American Sonnet (3)

The Heebeegeebees

he took his lover in parts

Jerry 1965

Confessions Noires

436 Moons

American Sonnet (4)

Croakers

The Thief of Spades

What the Moon Saw

His Comments After Her Hanging

Akbar the Mad Poet

Vet

August 29th 1970

David Polion

Bernadette Next Door

Fat

American Sonnet (5)

Casting Call (2)

What Happened in Peoria

No Malice in Movieland

Of Apes and Men

Pace Setter

i used to be so frank

Dream 549

the chip on my shoulder belongs to her

Blues for the Man on Sax (3)

Flawed Repetitions

American Sonnet (6)

Dream 711

Bwana Moon

Dream 820

All Maps Tell Lies

Criminal Behavior

Mr. Walter

Predetermination

Current Events (2)

Current Events (3)

Prancing in My Sleep

UCLA Graffiti Bio Med Library

Worker (2)

Figures of Speech

Takin' a Head Count. The American Urban Camp

Notes of a Cultural Terrorist (2)

we could've made it if

A Nigger's Voice Feels Curiously Cool

Dream 1031

Whales

The System

American Sonnet (7)

Bones

In a Near Empty Room

Meanwhile in Manhattan

Essay on Language (3)

Ar'ioch

All of That

Dream 1218

Want Ads

Eater of Good Books

Unfinished Script

Neruda

Southwestern Soul

Like Love (2)

Hecuba on Sunset (2)

Sapphire as Artist in the World

Dream 5272

Life as a Cartoon

Nosomania (3)

For Me When I Am Myself

Moanin' Groanin' Blues

American Sonnet (8)

American Sonnet (9)

Message from Xanadu (2)

American Sonnet (10)

American Sonnet (11)

Noise (2)

Ayin or No One

Poetry Lesson Number Three

Moon Laying on Her Side

Afterwards We Make Up

Post Modern Pounding

Violences

Essay on Language (4)

Creature of Two Worlds

Bird Evidence

The Stone Cat

Sudden Vacancy

Death Don't Drink Water. Just Before George Rises

Bedtime Story

Ghost of a Dance

Cancer

My Daddy Be a Baby

George Death Anniversary

Of an Absence

My Enlarged Heart

MacHospital

Gone But Not Forgotten

What the Walls Say

Unfinished Ghost Story (3)

Unfinished Ghost Story (4)

Unfinished Ghost Story (5)

Unfinished Ghost Story (6)

Prisoner of Los Angeles (3)

Prune Spoon June

After the Poem (3)

Dream 2610

Imitation of Death

Dream 1319

this too an illusion

The Umbrellas of Tejon-Lebec

The Edge of Dawn

The Moth

Dream 1345

Dream 3232

Decor (2)

Mastectomy

Return to Djerassi

Jazz Wazz

Sweet Mama Wanda Tells Fortunes for a Price (4)

Strayhorn

Soul Eyes

What Must Be Remembered

Nocturne.