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"Wanda Coleman is best known for what has often been termed her 'warrior voice' ... Coleman's poet's voice too can weep elegiac, summoning memories of her childhood's neighborhoods - her South LA's wild-frond palms, the smog smear of pre-ecology consciousness."-Los Angeles TimesIn
Imagoes, Wanda Coleman blends memory with the reality of her present through an idiom that oscillates seamlessly between natural imagery and the urban edifice of Los Angeles.
Booklist called it: "Hard, brilliant strokes shot through with street music."
About the author
Wanda Coleman—poet, storyteller and journalist—was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. Coleman was awarded the prestigious 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bathwater Wine from the American Academy of Poets, becoming the first African-American woman to ever win the prize, and was a bronze-medal finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry for Mercurochrome. In 2020, poet Terrance Hayes edited and introduced a selection of her work, Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems, the first new collection of her work since her death in 2013.
Summary
“Wanda Coleman is best known for what has often been termed her ‘warrior voice’ … Coleman’s poet’s voice too can weep elegiac, summoning memories of her childhood’s neighborhoods – her South LA’s wild-frond palms, the smog smear of pre-ecology consciousness.”—Los Angeles Times
In Imagoes, Wanda Coleman blends memory with the reality of her present through an idiom that oscillates seamlessly between natural imagery and the urban edifice of Los Angeles. Booklist called it: “Hard, brilliant strokes shot through with street music.”
