Jazz & Twelve O'clock Tales

Jazz & Twelve O'clock Tales
Author: Wanda Coleman
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2008
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1574232126

Poets who can write prose that equals their poetry are rare. With this collection of thirteen new short stories, Wanda Coleman, Los Angeles's unofficial poet laureate, proves an exception to the rule yet again. The characters in these stories lead lonely lives full of longing, of potential stifled by racism, poverty, and absurd accidents of fate. And yet, even though they are trapped by the present moment, their inner lives are lush, a mirror of the city of angels in which they live, a metropolis, always simmering, as Coleman writes in the final story, ever waiting to be borne on that balmy promised crescendo. Coleman applies a poet's economy of words to her fiction, setting a scene with lightning-quick strokes, letting a detail, a dialogue, or the brisk vernacular speak for itself. .

The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles

The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles
Author: Kevin R. McNamara
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-05-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139825402

Los Angeles has a tantalizing hold on the American imagination. Its self-magnifying myths encompass Hollywood glamour, Arcadian landscapes, and endless summer, but also the apocalyptic undertow of riots, environmental depredation, and natural disaster. This Companion traces the evolution of Los Angeles as the most public staging of the American Dream - and American nightmares. The expert contributors make exciting, innovative connections among the authors and texts inspired by the city, covering the early Spanish settlers, African American writers, the British and German expatriates of the 1930s and 1940s, Latino, and Asian LA literature. The genres discussed include crime novels, science fiction, Hollywood novels, literary responses to urban rebellion, the poetry scene, nature writing, and the most influential non-fiction accounts of the region. Diverse, vibrant, and challenging as the city itself, this Companion is the definitive guide to LA in literature.

Pow-Wow

Pow-Wow
Author: Ishmael Reed
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2009-01-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0786744022

Using the yardstick that a short story is any fiction under 15,000 words, Ishmael Reed--with the assistance of Carla Blank--has assembled an anthology that reexamines the history of the form across a broader, more inclusive spectrum. The result is a collection that stretches the boundaries of the American literary landscape, including work ranging from animal stories of the Northwest Coast Eyaks to African-American folklore to reflections on the American Muslim experience. Pow-Wow is the sequel to Reed's From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002, a volume that included both Tupac Shakur and T. S. Eliot, and was named one of the best poetry anthologies of 2003 by Library Journal. Its fiction-focused follow-up once again demonstrates the broad range of American writing, from such stellar names as Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Russell Banks, and Alejandro Murguíto newly discovered writers of all races, genders, and backgrounds. By presenting many different sides to the American story, the fiction of these writers challenges official history, shatters accepted myths, and provides alternatives to mainstream notions of personal and national identity. Gathering these voices together, Pow Wow offers a fascinating and vital opportunity to traverse the fault lines that separate, distinguish, and define a nation made of many Americas.

Wicked Enchantment

Wicked Enchantment
Author: Wanda Coleman
Publisher: Godine+ORM
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1574232347

A voice for justice, anti-racism, and equality—here is the greatest and most powerful work of the people’s poet, Wanda Coleman. One of the most talked about literary collections of the year is this collection by a beat-up, broke, and Black woman who wrote with anger, humor, and clarity about her life on the margins. Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems is a selection of 130 of Coleman’s poems spanning four decades, edited and introduced by Terrance Hayes. Although Coleman was rejected by the literary elites during her lifetime, here’s what people are saying now about Wicked Enchantment: “Wanda Coleman is not just wickedly wise, she is transcendent.” —The Washington Post “These poems are wildly fun and inventive . . . and frequently hilarious; they seem to cover every human experience and emotion.” —The New York Times “Wanda Coleman’s work has that ineffable quality that accompanies poetry you understand in your belly and your head. . . . It is an unmistakable style that propels a Coleman poem, and draws us into it.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts “Wicked Enchantment has words to crack you open and heal you where it counts—hateful and hilarious, heartbroke and hellbent.” —Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author “One of the greatest poets ever to come out of L.A.” —The New Yorker “One of the most exciting, original, deliciously dangerous voices of the 20th century.” —The Irish Times “Required Reading” —Bustle “Best Poetry of 2020” The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Irish Times Winner California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s 2020 Golden Poppy Award for Poetry

Into a Light Both Brilliant and Unseen

Into a Light Both Brilliant and Unseen
Author: Malin Pereira
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0820337137

Pereira's collection of interviews with leading contemporary African American poets Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss, Harryette Mullen, Cornelius Eady, Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, and Cyrus Cassells offers an in-depth look at the cultural and aesthetic perspectives of the post-Black Arts Movement generation.

Black Nature

Black Nature
Author: Camille T. Dungy
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2009
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0820334316

Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry--anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole. A Friends Fund Publication.

State of the Union

State of the Union
Author: Joshua Beckman
Publisher: Wave Books
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1933517336

A political anthology from the front lines of American poetics.

Six Tales of the Jazz Age and Other Stories

Six Tales of the Jazz Age and Other Stories
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1960
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 068471762X

Presents nine short stories by twentieth-century American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, including "The Jelly-Bean" and "Hot and Cold Blood," with an introduction by his daughter.