derrierloisirs.fr » Fiction » Mercurochrome: New Poems

Download Mercurochrome: New Poems ePub

by Wanda Coleman

ISBN 1574231537
ISBN13 978-1574231533
Language English
Author Wanda Coleman
Publisher Black Sparrow Press; First Paperback Edition edition (April 1, 2001)
Pages 270
Formats txt lrf rtf azw
Category Fiction
Subcategory Poetry
Size ePub 1818 kb
Size Fb2 1214 kb
Rating: 4.7
Votes: 322

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 turn up the emotional thermostat, sizzling and shooting off sparks.

Finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry: "Wanda Coleman's poetry stings, stains, and ultimately helps heal wounds like the old-fashioned Mercurochrome of her title

Only 1 left in stock (more on the way). Finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry: "Wanda Coleman's poetry stings, stains, and ultimately helps heal wounds like the old-fashioned Mercurochrome of her title. These searing, soaring poems challenge us to repair the fractures of human difference, and feel what it is to be made whole again.

Mercurochrome: New Poems.

We’re dedicated to reader privacy so we never track you. 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. Nominated for the National Book Award in Poetry, the poems are variegated as the human heart, treating love, motherhood, daughterhood, sisterhood, sex, racism, fury, loneliness, comedy as well as tragedy-often switching between them on the same page. She knew Los Angeles in its soul. Here's just an example of her art

Photo by Rod Bradley, 1989. National Book Awards finalist. Mambo Hips and Make Believe: A Novel. What Saves Us" interview of Coleman by Priscilla Ann Brown, Callaloo Vol. 26, N., Dept. of English, Texas A & M University, 2003.

Wanda Coleman has been publishing with Black Sparrow Press for nearly 25 years, which is amazing since she's only 55, and looks much younger than that

Wanda Coleman has been publishing with Black Sparrow Press for nearly 25 years, which is amazing since she's only 55, and looks much younger than that. MERCUROCHROME, her latest, may be in fact her best.

Wanda Coleman is a poet and writer from Los Angeles, California. Her numerous poetry collections include Mercurochrome: New Poems, nominated for the National Book Award; Bathwater Wine, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and Ostinato Vamps. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Emmy Award as a writer for Days of Our Lives.

Mercurochrome: New Poems, Black Sparrow Press (Santa Rosa, CA), 2001. Ostinato Vamps: Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2003. Wanda Coleman-Greatest Hits: 1966-2003, Pudding House Press (Columbus, Ohio), 2004. Poems Seismic in Scene (chapbook), with Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, (Lille, France), 2006. Jazz and Twelve O’Clock Tales, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 2008. Also author of "The Time Is Now" episode, The Name of the Game, NBC-TV, 1970.

Wanda Coleman - Born in 1946, Wanda Coleman was the author of several poetry collections .

Wanda Coleman - Born in 1946, Wanda Coleman was the author of several poetry collections, including Bathwater Wine (Black Sparrow Press, 1998), which. 1968-1986 (1988); and Imagoes (1983).

Talk about Mercurochrome: New Poems

Saintrius

Coleman was difficult for me to understand, at first. I had a hard time digesting her poems, until I had read more than a handful and I became used to her blunt yet beautiful voice. She seems wildly critical of and victimized by American society, both as an African American and as a woman. When she takes her children to the doctor’s office, they tell her they are elephants and there is the danger of them growing tusks and causing a stampede. I think the elephant description is mocking the cliché of what is African, and since the doctors perceive her children to potentially be dangerous I think this refers to the historical stereotype that African Americans are people who are more ‘wild’ and need to be tamed (digging way back into history when they were viewed animals/savages). With regards to her struggles with living as a woman in America, she writes some beautiful and painfully accurate lines: “squeezing the three hundred pound lady/into the size ten life”. For whatever reason, this woman is overweight and our society tells her that it’s not okay and she needs to change to look and be closer to our standard of beauty and normalcy. The irony is that she is probably overweight because of our hypercritical society. Women are held to an unattainable standard for beauty, and being fooled into thinking that it’s possible to look like models on magazine covers can cause a lot of depression when ladies discover they are failing to reach that impossible goal. The second quote I really like regarding the lifestyle of women in America is when Coleman says “understanding is a salon/appointment away”. So genius!! It’s interesting because it seems to be saying that women are best understood at the salon, but salons are superficial places by the nature of their business (all about improving looks) and socially (stereotypically full of gossip and female cattiness), so does Coleman think that America perceives women to be shallow and catty? Perhaps, I wouldn’t be surprised.
My favorite poems are the following: “Champagne and Js” and “Unfinished Ghost Story (9)” because of the genius internal rhyming she uses and the subtle repetitions. These poems were so genius that I had to smile a big toothy smile while reading them. I also find “Put Some Sex Sonnet” to be particularly clever. First of all the title is very coy, but secondly the poem cites a lot of biological terms while managing to not sound like a doctor’s report. “Richness”, “duet”, “melds”, and ”wave” are all words that distract from her technical expression and it creates quite an experience for the reader. I’m not sure what she is getting at with these poems that have a more sexual tone – is she condemning physical pleasures for the way men/society use them to cheapen women down to mere playthings? Or is she celebrating the pleasure that she can feel as a woman, as well as her power to control her own sexual experiences? I think it may be a bit of both.

Anarasida

A reponse to Mercurochrome:

The night sky stretches itself out on my skin, smoothing like shadows over the crevices of my feet, the creases of my elbows. I am not in the darkness but of the darkness, with stars that glitter off of me, in my eyes and in my smile and in the dreams (duller now) I carry in my hands and in my heart. How heavy are dreams that turn bitter?

The shine that I reflect throws off the image of a bull’s-eye (taunting others to hit the center), I think. Red circles (never white) stained the thin skin on my ribs, the lump of my right breast, the panel of my forehead, and smoothed over the beat of my heart (it pulses below my skin). I try to tell others (whisper) about the stripes I wear, but they do not listen over the shouting of others around me.

Should I too shout?
Or should I wait, my skin in the shadows, to be heard (I will wait for years).

The target, sometimes if I scrub really hard, it will fade into a slight bruise, barely visible beneath my clothes and my dark hair. But some mornings, I must forget to wash because it stands out in weals against my hands, like a lacy henna tattoo that undulates gently up the arms of Indian brides (also in red, also as per tradition).

Sometime before, in that young time before I saw a target on me and on the dark skin of others around me, my dreams were light and lifted up my shoulders and my face with ease. Now, I see the stares, hear the whispers, remember my darkness and my dreams are heavy and dull. They sink to the pit of my stomach and simmer there, burning holes in my belly that drip down my legs to my hardened heels (from standing when others sit).

Others, too, forget to wash off their bulls-eye, often made all the more obvious by their cries of injustice (nobody listens). Or perhaps, they find that they cannot wash it. Surely for some, it must be easier to slip by unnoticed, while for others – no matter how hard they try – every walk, every door knock, every shopping trip may be their last.

The night sky in my skin shines with fewer stars knowing about the many targeted innocents, and my hands fall to the ground with the weight of bitter dreams (heavier now).

I see this and know it is my time to shout, too.

Related to Mercurochrome: New Poems