Sonia Sanchez's Poetic Spirit through Haiku

Sonia Sanchez's Poetic Spirit through Haiku
Author: John Zheng
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2017-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498543332

This collection of ten critical essays is the first scholarly criticism of haiku by Sonia Sanchez, who has exemplified herself for six decades as a major figure in the Black Arts Movement, a central activist in civil rights and women’s movements, and an internationally-known writer in American literature. Sanchez’s haiku, as an integral and prominent part of contemporary African American poetry, have expressed not only her ideas of nature, beauty, and harmony but also her aesthetic experience of music, culture, and love. Aesthetically, this experience reflects a poetic mind which has helped the poet to shape or reimage her poetic spirit.

Collected Poems

Collected Poems
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0807026522

Winner Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career. Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez’s poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire love and community engagement among her legions of fans. Beginning with her earliest work, including poems from her first volume, Homecoming (1969), through to 2019, the poet has collected her favorite work in all forms of verse, from Haiku to excerpts from book-length narratives. Her lifelong dedication to the causes of Black liberation, social equality, and women’s rights is evident throughout, as is her special attention to youth in poems addressed to children and young adults. As Maya Angelou so aptly put it: “Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature’s forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.”

Morning Haiku

Morning Haiku
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2010-02-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0807069116

Poems of commemoration and loss for readers of all ages, from a leading writer of the Black Arts Movement and the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award–winner. Sonia Sanchez's collection of haiku celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism. In her verses, we hear the sounds of Max Roach "exploding in the universe," the "blue hallelujahs" of the Philadelphia Murals, and the voice of Odetta "thundering out of the earth." Sanchez sings the praises of contemporaries whose poetic alchemy turns "words into gems": Maya Angelou, Richard Long, and Toni Morrison. And she pays homage to peace workers and civil rights activists from Rosa Parks and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to Brother Damu, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. Often arranged in strings of twelve or more, the haiku flow one into the other in a steady song of commemoration. Sometimes deceptively simple, her lyrics hold a very powerful load of emotion and meaning. There are intimate verses here for family and friends, verses of profound loss and silence, of courage and resilience. Sanchez is innovative, composing haiku in new forms, including a section of moving two-line poems that reflect on the long wake of 9/11. In a brief and personal opening essay, the poet explains her deep appreciation for haiku as an art form. With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez's freshest, most poignant work.

Sonia Sanchez's Poetic Spirit Through Haiku

Sonia Sanchez's Poetic Spirit Through Haiku
Author: John Zheng
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-03-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781498543347

This collection of ten critical essays is the first scholarly criticism of haiku by Sonia Sanchez. Her haiku, full of power and emotional voice for people, love, human nature, and African American experience, redefine haiku in English and African American poetic expression with her unique individuality.

I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and Other Plays

I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't and Other Plays
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0822393050

Sonia Sanchez is a prolific, award-winning poet and one of the most prominent writers in the Black Arts movement. This collection brings her plays together in one volume for the first time. Like her poetry, Sanchez’s plays voice her critique of the racism and sexism that she encountered as a young female writer in the black militant community in the late 1960s and early 1970s, her ongoing concern with the well-being of the black community, and her commitment to social justice. In addition to The Bronx Is Next (1968), Sister Son/ji (1969), Dirty Hearts (1971), Malcolm/Man Don’t Live Here No Mo (1972), and Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? (1974), this collection includes the never-before-published dramas I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t (1982) and 2 X 2 (2009), as well as three essays in which Sanchez reflects on her art and activism. Jacqueline Wood’s introduction illuminates Sanchez’s stagecraft in relation to her poetry and advocacy for social change, and the feminist dramatic voice in black revolutionary art.

Does Your House Have Lions?

Does Your House Have Lions?
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 70
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0807069523

From the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award–winner, this is an epic poem on kin estranged, the death of a brother from AIDS, and the possibility of reconciliation and love in the face of loss.

Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku

Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku
Author: Ce Rosenow
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2022-07-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1793653186

Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku: Merging Traditions identifies Moore as a primary figure in the American Haiku Movement as well as a significant contributor to the field of African American haiku. Ce Rosenow analyzes the ways in which Moore combines haiku with a variety of other traditions: African American storytelling, jazz poetry, ekphrasis, and elegies. An examination of Moore’s haibun, a Japanese form combining prose and haiku, reveals the further development of the African American aesthetic created in his individual poems. Ultimately, the author argues that Moore’s decades-long engagement with haiku and his prolific publication history solidify haiku as an established form in African American poetry.

Shake Loose My Skin

Shake Loose My Skin
Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2012-06-12
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0807068896

An extraordinary retrospective covering over thirty years of work, From a leading writer of the Black Arts Movement and the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award–winner. Shake Loose My Skin is a stunning testament to the literary, sensual, and political powers of the award-winning Sonia Sanchez.

The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

The Vintage Book of African American Poetry
Author: Michael S. Harper
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 030776513X

In The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, editors Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton present the definitive collection of black verse in the United States--200 years of vision, struggle, power, beauty, and triumph from 52 outstanding poets. From the neoclassical stylings of slave-born Phillis Wheatley to the wistful lyricism of Paul Lawrence Dunbar . . . the rigorous wisdom of Gwendolyn Brooks...the chiseled modernism of Robert Hayden...the extraordinary prosody of Sterling A. Brown...the breathtaking, expansive narratives of Rita Dove...the plaintive rhapsodies of an imprisoned Elderidge Knight . . . The postmodern artistry of Yusef Komunyaka. Here, too, is a landmark exploration of lesser-known artists whose efforts birthed the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movements--and changed forever our national literature and the course of America itself. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully structured, The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry is a collection of inestimable value to students, educators, and all those interested in the ever-evolving tradition that is American poetry.

Sonia Life

Sonia Life
Author: Clarence Hunter
Publisher: Abbott Press
Total Pages: 111
Release: 2014-08-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1458217140

In the 1950s, the city of Alexandria, Louisiana, is home to a black neighborhood known as Sonia Quarters. The Sonia, as its residents call it, is filled with fascinating charactersamong them five teenage boys, for whom the summer of 1957 is especially memorable. Curly, Joe, Willie T., Ray, and Harry work and hang out together, doing odd jobs for neighbors and getting into trouble. On the day of the stormHurricane Audreythe five boy spend the day going around town on safari. They meet up early in the morning and make all the stops, going to a forbidden swimming hole (where they encounter a crazy watchman), crossing a drainage pipe high above a canal, visiting the hobo jungle, and working at the zoo. The boys enjoy the day togetheronly to realize at the end that one of them will be leaving for good. And then, as the evening comes, so does the storm that will change the landscape of their hometown. In this novel based on a true story, one man recalls his old neighborhood in central Louisiana and the people who lived there, going back to the places and events of one pivotal day as seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy.