Ms. Coleman's powerful collection MERCUROCHROME has just been nominated for the National Book Award in poetry. Quite an honor. Her last collection of poetry, BATHWATER WINE (Black Sparrow, 1998) won the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and her memoir LOVE-INS WITH NIETZSCHE (Wake Up Heavy, 2000) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. It seems the literary world is standing up and taking note of one of our greatest modern poets.

Wanda Coleman has been publishing with Black Sparrow Press for nearly 25 years, which is amazing since she's only 55, and looks much younger than that. Even more amazing than the devotion she and BSP share, is the strength and vitality encompassed in each new volume they produce together. MERCUROCHROME, her latest, may be in fact her best. It is not too long, as the review above would suggest (her last collection of poems is nearly three years old now so there's plenty to print), nor is the power diluted. On the contrary, Coleman's voice is as strong as ever. And as diverse. I don't know if I've ever read a collection of sonnets or transliterations of mainly dead-white guys, that was so compelling. This book is as red-hot as the title suggests. Huzzah Wanda Coleman! P.S. I also wanted to praise the wonderful cover design by Barbara Martin on this, and so many other Black Sparrow books.

Wanda Coleman speaks clearly and powerfully in this book of poems. You won't find many "typical" love poems here -- the subject matter is sometimes brutal but always honest. My favorite poem in this collection is her account of the night that the fast food taco restaurant, where she was working, got held up. I won't spoil the poem for you because the unexpected outcome is part of the force of this poem. I'd highly recommend that you read it for yourself!

Worth the wait to receive this awesome book of poetry, prose, and pictures. An excellent Christmas gift for anyone who knows what it's like to work hard for the money.

When someone's work is usually referred to as visceral, the person doing the name-calling is usually referring to something ravagingly daring and unapologetic in the wor or the author's voice. In no other case is this more clear than in the work of Coleman. She strangles a common story's possible endings and finds the one most compelling one for her voice until it screams, and does so in fewer pages than most lauded authors. Her poems do this all the time, but her stories are gut-punches of the highest, most unforgiving literary tradition. The most astounding thing about her abilities is that she does so while not making the work trashy or for mere effect. Not for the meek of mind.

Wanda Coleman's "A War of Eyes and Other Stories" plunges the reader into some really sordid and/or tragic tales from urban African-American life. There is a lot of sex, profanity, and violence (with an emphasis on black-on-black violence). She also deals with such topics as gambling, illegal drugs, racial tension, and sexual dysfunction. The stories range from short 1- or 2-page character studies to the longest story, which is about 20 pages long. Throughout the book Coleman masterfully captures the rhythms of black vernacular English.

Some of the most vivid selections in the book are as follows: "Ladies," about an encounter between two black women, a professional counselor and a woman mired in poverty; "The Scream," a subtly horrific tale; "The Friday Night Shift at the Taco House Blues (Wah-Wah)," which is basically a slice from the life of an urban fast-food restaurant; and "Word Monkey," a richly ironic story about a black writer of the pimp-and-junky genre. But the most stunning story is the longest one, "Big Dreams," an intense study of a woman pursuing a dream.

With her raw, unapologetic style and subject matter, Coleman reminds me somewhat of Charles Bukowski, but her work is very much rooted in African-American female experience. But another author I would compare her to is Poe: many of Coleman's stories are truly horror stories. But her horror is not supernatural; rather, it is firmly rooted in urban reality, with its violence and socioeconomic pressure. Coleman is a writer from the edge whose work has real power.

This book came out a while ago. I read it and I thought, here's a writer as pure as James Purdy, as hip and relevant as Mary Gaitskill or Gary Indiana. Why haven't I heard of her? I thought she just did poetry. Many authors write books of short stories that are great, yet never have I read an author that has covered as much ground as Coleman in War of Eyes. I read it and I thought, how did she not lose her mind? What I love the most about her short stories is how they have many beats. So many things happen in one story you wonder how she gets from A to Z so flawlessly and so beautifully without any self consciousness. I hesitate to compare her to other black writers like Toni Morrison and Jamaica Kinkaid because she trancends their P.C. conceits so ferociously that she should only be compared to the greatest writers of all time, regardless of race. Wanda Coleman is FIERCE.

Wanda Coleman is quickly becoming my favorite American poet. This collection, which I'm reading at the same time with her latest book MERCUROCRHOME, only reinforces my stance. As a young white male I shied away from Coleman's writing for quite some time, thinking, however ignorant this may seem, that I'd find nothing in common with her, nothing to relate to. When you're wrong you're wrong, and when I finally did dive into her work (her first book MAD DOG, BLACK LADY) I felt like I did when I first read Bukowski: I had found something special. Some have deemed Coleman as the "Black, female Bukowski," but of course this is too simple a comparison. They both hailed from the underbelly of LA, and both can't seem to get the city out of their blood. Coleman's poetry does share something with Bukowski's early lyricism, but beyond that there is no real comparison (the only other thing I can think of is that Black Sparrow has published nearly all of their books). Coleman's work is more studied and stylized, more diverse in technique and scope. I have had the great pleasure and honor now of actually publishing some of Coleman's work, and her power continues to blow me away. I look forward to every new piece she puts out there.

Bathwater Wine by Wanda Coleman is a book of poetry that everyone can relate to on one level or another. The poetry in this book is easy to read, realistic, and down to earth. Coleman writes about life events that many people can relate to. She has poured her heart and soul on the pages and the reader can easily see stages of her life in the poems. The book showcases all forms of poetry including sonnets and songs. Among the poems are "Jazz Whine," which is a dedication to Jazz music, but also a look at life lessons, "Levels of Meaning," which looks at what it means to be a woman and the many images it partakes, and "Firesong 1964," which is a dedication to the monk in Viet Nam who showed the world what he believed in. This book is a must for anyone who is discovering modern poetry for the first time. It is deep, but easy. It is Coleman, but it is also you and me. It is an All American book as portrayed by both the poems inside and the patriotic red, white, and blue cover. It is an excellent collection of poems from one of today's most profound poets.

This book is actually two: 1979's "Mad Dog Black Lady" and the 1990 "African Sleeping Sickness". Both are incredibly powerful collections of poetry (with some stories), and the sheer volume of work contained here (328 pgs, with almost a poem for every 2 on average) is almost enough to make you OD on poetry. The work is strong stuff, with stories of love, sex and danger throughout, and Coleman's voice is so hardcore compelling you don't know if you should read the bok or run from it.

Captures the biting energy of her short stories in poetic form. Wow.

Let's not start with the spelling errors that are consistent enough that they can't be editorial mistakes. Let's not start with the subject matter, which wavers over the line of political polemic once too often. Let's not start with the scareligious procedure of putting lines above the poem that explain it. Instead, let's start with the definition of poetry itself and the basic idea, always there even if not stated, that one of the primary functions of poetry is to elevate the language in some way, that indefinable something that makes you realize a poem is a poem and not just random thoughts brokwn up into lines.

There are times, more times than can be coincidence, that Wanda Coleman's work strays over that line of language elevation. The woman obviously has a command of the language that she is capable of unfolding and wielding with scalpel-like precision when she wants to:

when god passed out the baby fat she was first in line she wasn't pretty [enough] to be a j.a.p. lost her virginity in the back seat of a cadillac her shrink diagnosed her as manic repressive

anorexia as goddess words so think you're hungry again an hour after you eat them

but unfortunately such moments are all too rare in this eighteen-year two-hundred-twenty page compendium of work. Most of it sounds more like it came from the freely-flowing pen of those too drunk, or too tired, to do anything but automatic writing. While there are some poets who worked at their best that way-- Desnos, Bukowski, and a handful of others come to mind-- the majority who try to do it fail miserably.

she walks walking walked all through life walks restless like her people waiting to see what happens knowing it will never happen until after she's dead

...and the walking shall continue until we can walk no more.

Now, I'm all too willing to kick a lot of swine out of the way to find a few pearls, but there are some things that will make it an annoying process, like an inability to spell "enough" and "come" correctly for two hundred twenty pages-- especially when your command and grasp of the English language is at least at the college level. By the time I got to the end of it, I was skimming pretty hard.

I respect Robert P. Beveridge's review, but I don't see the distinction he's making between Coleman's "scalpel" poems and her "automatic writing" poems. The "walking" quote he singled out for criticism comes from one of the more-effective pieces, in my opinion. This may come down to a matter of taste. I wonder if Wanda Coleman herself would agree that poetry is supposed to elevate the language. She doesn't seem to be trying to "elevate" anything. She seems to be groping at the limits of language to express the kind of pain that usually shocks people mute.

If you have never read any of Coleman's poetry before, dive on in. She is a gifted writer with one foot in the black oral tradition and the other firmly rooted in the American experience. A previous review of this book complained about Coleman's inability to spell certain words, such as come and enough, correctly. Obviously, this reviewer has his head buried in the Ivory Tower. It seems fairly remedial to have to point out that Coleman purposely misspells these and other words: she is trying to make a poetic point! I suggest reading the poem "Essay on Language" (a version of which also appears in her "Hand Dance" collection) for a further understanding of why she chooses to write in a style that reflects her life and her experience. Standard English is nothing but a dialect, you know.

If you are looking for gripping, emotional, passionate poetry that tells a woman's side of the story, pick up Heavy Daughter Blues. You won't be disappointed.

I collect Grable memorabilia which is why I bought this book. A rather depressing book of poetry - can't say I would recommend buying the book.