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. she is the author of sixteen books, including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a.
Her numerous honors include the American Poetry Society\'s 2018 Wallace Stevens Award.
About the Author: Sonia Sanchez is poet, activist, scholar, and formerly the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women\'s Studies at Temple University, and is currently a poet-in-residence there.
With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez\'s freshest, most poignant work.
In a brief and personal opening essay, the poet explains her deep appreciation for Haiku as an art form.
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.
There are intimate verses here for family and friends, verses of profound loss and silence, of courage and resilience.
Sometimes deceptively simple, her lyrics hold a very powerful load of emotion and meaning.
Often arranged in strings of twelve or more, the Haiku flow one into the other in a steady song of commemoration.
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.
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.
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.
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
