Celebrating Contemporary Black Poets: Sonia Sanchez

Homegirls and Handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez “Only a poet with an innocent heart can exorcise so much pain with so much beauty.”—Isabel Allende A reprint of Sonia Sanchez’s award-winning collection, which contains some of her seminal work. Winner of the American Book Award. Sonia Sanchez is a poet, activist, and scholar and one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement. She is the author of sixteen books and lives in Philadelphia.

Like the Singing Coming off the Drums by Sonia Sanchez Here is a collection of new love poems from Sonia Sanchez. In haiku, tanka, and sensual blues, Sanchez writes of the many forms love takes: burning, dreamy, disappointed, and vulnerable. In three sections - Naked in the Streets, Shake Loose My Skin, and In This Wet Season - she takes us from the most intimate landscapes of passion to its public celebration in love poems dedicated to icons of our age, including Tupac Shakur and Ella Fitzgerald.

Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez This new volume by the much-loved poet Sonia Sanchez, her first in over a decade, is music to the ears: a collection of haiku that 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.

Shake Loose My Skin by Sonia Sanchez; Deborah Chasman (Editor) Covering over thirty years of work, Shake Loose My Skin is a stunning testament to the literary, sensual, and political powers of the award-winning Sonia Sanchez. "This world is a better place because of Sonia Sanchez: more livable, more laughable, more manageable. I wish millions of people knew that some of the joy in their lives comes from the fact that Sonia Sanchez is writing poetry." -Maya Angelou