Drink from the Cup of Poetry--Have Some Wanda Coleman

Like Wallace Stegner, I am in the 'universal' tradition of writers who concern themselves with The Truth -- never mind that it is apt to hurt someone, in some way, most likely me.
--Wanda Coleman

Almost any poet will have a hard time getting a book published, marketed or sold. But this is especially true of black writers who unapologetically write honestly and assertively about the black condition, and even more so of those who write about poor blacks, the oppressed, the down-and-out; the brother who just lost his job, the hooker on the corner, the dealer down the street, the addict in an alley getting ready to commit a petty crime, the status of black women in our society. Needless to say, this is not the kind of stuff that sells well at Barnes & Nobles.

Mari Evans, great poet and prime mover of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s, in an interview in Crisis, put it this way:

‘The only insurmountable obstacle I've faced is being a Black writer. Nobody has ever refused my work because I was a woman, but I've found that when we write about those things of which we are most passionate ... [they] are much more difficult to market. I haven't been able to crossover into that realm that would pay me more. What I write doesn't make me a bestselling author. I'm concerned about the issues that impact African American people. Even Black people want escape material, which is why street literature is so popular. They want to escape our issues, rather than standing and confronting them."

Like Evans, Wanda Coleman writes about the black condition, about black folks facing tough times, about tough black women facing tougher times still. Consider this bluesy reaction to the loss of a job:

"got a fifth o mad dog
to celebrate this day
got me a fifth o mad dog
to celebrate this day
a year of unemployment
and two weeks severance pay"

Yes, folks, when you’re poor, God can appear in the form of an unemployment check.

Or consider, in ‘Doing Battle with the Wolf at the Door," Coleman’s take on the police and the state.

“An occasional transfusion arrives in the mail
Or i find plasma in the streets
An occasional vampire flashes my way
But they don’t take much
My enemy is the wolf
Who eats even the mind

The wolf will come for me sooner or later
i know this
The wolf makes no sexual distinction
i am the right color
He has a fetish for black meat and
Frequently hunts with his mate alongside him"

But perhaps Coleman’s most memorable, most poignant truth about American society can be found in her poem ‘Women of My Color.” Here, Coleman
skillfully uses sex to draw the reader into the poem; and then drops knowledge like Einstein at the chalkboard on what it means to be a black woman in patriarchal white America:

Women of my Color

by Wanda Coleman

i follow the curve of his penis
and go down

there is a peculiar light in which women
of my color are regarded by men

being on the bottom where pressures
are greatest is least desirable
would be better to be dead i
sometimes think

there is a peculiar light in which women
of my race are regarded by black men
as saints
as mothers
as sisters
as whores

but mostly as the enemy

it’s not our fault we are victims
who have chosen to struggle and stay alive

there is a peculiar light in which women
of my race are regarded by white men
as exotic 20
as enemy

but mostly as whores

it’s enough to make me cry
but i don’t

following the curve of his penis
i go down

will i ever see
the sun!

“Women of My Color" is classic Coleman; dropping truth, singing blues, and never forgetting-- to paraphrase James Brown, the godfather of soul-- to "make it funky'' in a country where folks would rather climb mountains, bungy jump, watch soap operas or nod off to lame jokes by Jay Leno than hear what they know, deep in their hearts, is the real deal.

The daddy says drink from the cup of poetry. Go ahead: sip some hot soul from the truth-shaker, the sweet Momma Wanda, the Mad Dog Lady. Go ahead. Have some Wanda Coleman.