Wanda Coleman (1946–2013)
Autor von A War of Eyes and Other Stories
Über den Autor
Wanda Coleman was born in Los Angeles, California on November 13, 1946. She attended Los Angeles Valley College and California State Los Angeles but did not earn a degree. In the early 1970s, she embarked on a journalism career with an assignment from the Los Angeles Free Press to write about a mehr anzeigen fundraiser for Black Panther supporter Angela Davis. However, her sarcastic coverage caused consternation in the Davis camp, and she was blackballed by the underground paper for a decade. In 1975 she landed a job writing for the NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives and won a daytime Emmy for her work the following year. She took writing workshops around Los Angeles. Her first book of poetry, Art in the Court of the Blue Fag, was published in 1977. During her lifetime, she wrote more than 20 books including Mad Dog, Black Lady; Imagoes; Heavy Daughter Blues; Mercurochrome; and The Riot Inside Me: More Trials and Tremors. She won the Lenore Marshall National Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1999 for Bathwater Wine. In 2012, she received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She died after a long illness on November 22, 2013 at the age of 67. (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen
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Werke von Wanda Coleman
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Zugehörige Werke
Breaking Ice. Ein Anthologie zeigenössischer afro-amerikanischer Literatur (1990) — Mitwirkender — 276 Exemplare, 1 Rezension
No More Masks: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets (1993) — Mitwirkender, einige Ausgaben — 212 Exemplare, 3 Rezensionen
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (2020) — Mitwirkender — 189 Exemplare, 4 Rezensionen
Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009) — Mitwirkender — 117 Exemplare
In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry (1994) — Mitwirkender — 99 Exemplare
The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales (2003) — Mitwirkender — 67 Exemplare, 1 Rezension
Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2013) — Mitwirkender — 42 Exemplare
The Geography Of Home: California's Poetry Of Place (California Poetry Series) (1999) — Mitwirkender — 41 Exemplare
The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe and Other Stories of Women and Fatness (2003) — Mitwirkender — 27 Exemplare, 1 Rezension
The Unforgetting Heart: An Anthology of Short Stories by African American Women (1859-1993) (1993) — Mitwirkender — 23 Exemplare
Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century (2002) — Mitwirkender — 18 Exemplare
The New York quarterly : NYQ : Number 36, Summer 1988 — Mitwirkender — 1 Exemplar
Black Clock 7 — Mitwirkender — 1 Exemplar
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Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1946-11-13
- Todestag
- 2013-11-22
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- USA
- Geburtsort
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Sterbeort
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Berufe
- Writer
Performer
editor (production)
proofreader
editor (magazine)
waitress (Zeige alle 8)
recruiter (Peace Corps/Vista; 1968-75)
staff writer (Days of Our Lives, National Broadcasting Co. [1968]) - Beziehungen
- Straus, Austin (husband)
- Organisationen
- PEN
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
National Books Awards Poetry Finalist 2001
This book was published in 2001, back when I did not follow poetry awards. That was also in my Years of Little Reading due to having small kids. I heard about Coleman because my son read some of her poems in his California Literature class this year. The kids in the class had not been born when this book was published. And one of the poems (which I marked but lost because my cat pulls markers out of books) is about academics not accepting her into the academy as a self-taught poet without even a BA. She has made it into high scho0ol curriculum.
My favorite part of this book was Part II, Twentieth Century Nod-Out. These poems largely focus on life in LA--especially as a black woman in Los Angeles, like Coleman herself. In many ways little-to-nothing has changed.
In other ways, everything has changed since she wrote this book. Coleman had a son who died of AIDS at the age of 32, c1990 if I understood the poetry. There is a lot about grief and memory. And a fair amount about "the virus". It was strange reading this in 2021, when "the virus" means something very very different. Meanwhile, AIDS in the US is no longer the death sentence it once was.
I am not saying this book is dated. It is an amazing snapshot of a time and place, that has changed and also not changed at all. I imagine reading this back in 2001 was a very different experience--something else that is gone forever.… (mehr)
This book was published in 2001, back when I did not follow poetry awards. That was also in my Years of Little Reading due to having small kids. I heard about Coleman because my son read some of her poems in his California Literature class this year. The kids in the class had not been born when this book was published. And one of the poems (which I marked but lost because my cat pulls markers out of books) is about academics not accepting her into the academy as a self-taught poet without even a BA. She has made it into high scho0ol curriculum.
My favorite part of this book was Part II, Twentieth Century Nod-Out. These poems largely focus on life in LA--especially as a black woman in Los Angeles, like Coleman herself. In many ways little-to-nothing has changed.
In other ways, everything has changed since she wrote this book. Coleman had a son who died of AIDS at the age of 32, c1990 if I understood the poetry. There is a lot about grief and memory. And a fair amount about "the virus". It was strange reading this in 2021, when "the virus" means something very very different. Meanwhile, AIDS in the US is no longer the death sentence it once was.
I am not saying this book is dated. It is an amazing snapshot of a time and place, that has changed and also not changed at all. I imagine reading this back in 2001 was a very different experience--something else that is gone forever.… (mehr)
I had not heard of Wanda Coleman before picking up this new collection of her selected works but it made me an instant fan. Sadly, she passed in 2013. Most of these poems were written 30-40 years ago but are strikingly relevant to the current racial environment in America today. I hope this collection finds her a whole new audience.
These are Coleman's poems laid out according to Jean-Jacques Tachdjian's graphic design. The design overwhelms the poems; sometimes the words are impossible to read; sometimes the visuals seem arbitrary. As a book of graphic design, maybe this is great, I can't judge. As a book of poetry, it just made me long for plain type so I could read the wonderful things she says. If the poems are available to you elsewhere, go there.
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I wrote down lots of favorite poems to return to and read again, but a few highlights were the anxiety/vulnerability of "Giving Birth," the heartbreak of "Emmett Till," the playfulness/wistfulness of "Thiefheart."
What people talk about when they call poetry powerful.… (mehr)