From “where I live” to “my slave songs”: Integrity and Extension in Wanda Coleman’s Poetry

Jerzy Kamionowski

University of Białystok, Poland

Jerzy Kamionowski is an Associate Professor at the University of Białystok. His Ph.D. dissertation entitled New Wine in Old Bottles. The Virtuality of the Presented World in Angela Carter’s Fiction (1999) was written under supervision of Professor Jacek Wiśniewski, who had kindly agreed to take the Polish literature graduate under his scholarly wing. Jerzy Kamionowski is the author of Głosy z “dzikiej strefy” (Voices from the “wild zone”) (2011) on poetry of three women writers of the Black Arts Movement: Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Audre Lorde, and From the House of the Slave to the Home of the Brave. The Motif of Home in Poetry by Black Women since the late 1960s (2019). Presently, he takes interest in the poetry of the post-BAM generation, as well as the representations of the Middle Passage in African American literature.


https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3515-8751


Abstrakt

This article discusses Wanda Coleman’s poetry in terms of two interconnected categories which launched the studies of black literature by Craig Werner: “integrity” and “extension”. These categories are assumed to correspond to the standard critical perception of Coleman’s oeuvre as content- and form-oriented, respectively, where the former pre-conditions the latter. However, the implemented concepts not only demonstrate how well-acquainted the poet was with the everyday ghetto lives of poor black women and with multiple forms of discrimination against them (“integrity”), but also reveal her experimental attitude to language and to formal dimensions of poetry (“extension”). Also, a close reading of Coleman’s protracted series of American jazz sonnets and her “Retro Rogue Anthology” poems reveals that this formal strategy extended her attention to a new subject matter (i.e., history, culture, and black identity), perceived and presented from a collective black perspective. Eventually, Coleman’s re-writing of white classic poems bears the marks of the strategy of Signifyin(g) combined with the iconoclastic tradition pioneered by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Słowa kluczowe:

Wanda Coleman, black poetry, integrity, extension, Amerrican (jazz) sonnets, Retro Rogue Anthology, iconoclastic Signifyin(g)

Baraka, A. (Jones, L.) & Fundi (Billy Abernathy).1970. In Our Terribleness (Some elements and meaning in black style). Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Browne, M.L. 2022. “Introduction.” Coleman, Wanda. Heart First into This Ruin: The Complete American Sonnets. Boston: Black Sparrow Press.

Coleman, W. 1979. Mad Dog Black Lady. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.

Coleman, W. 1983. Imagoes. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.

Coleman, W. 1988. On Theloniousism. Caliban 14: 67–79.

Coleman, W. 1998. Bathwater Wine. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.

Coleman, W. 2001. Mercurochrome: New Poems. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press.

Coleman, W. 2022. Heart First into This Ruin: The Complete American Sonnets. Boston: Black Sparrow Press.

Collins, P. H. 1991. Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 76–106. New York/London: Routledge.

Comer, K. 1999. Revisiting Western Criticism through Wanda Coleman. Western American Literature 33/4: 356–383.

Czemiel, G. 2014. Taking Out the Trash: Mina Loy’s Exorcising of Modernist Aesthetics. In: M. Wiśniewski (ed.) Ex(o/e)rcising Modernism, 10–37. Warszawa: SWPS.

Durczak, J. 2003. Grupa poetycka Black Mountain. In: A. Salska (ed.), Historia literatury amerykańskiej XX wieku, 165–178. Kraków: Universitas.

Gates, H. L, Jr. 1988. The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning. The Signifying Monkey. A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, 44– 88. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jones, L. (Amiri Baraka). 1966. City of Harlem. Home. Social Essays. 87–93. New York: William Morrow & Co.

Kent, G. 1972. Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture. Chicago: Third World Press.

Magistrale, T. 1989. Doing Battle with the Wolf: A Critical Introduction to Wanda Coleman’s Poetry. Black American Literature Forum 23.3: 539–554.

Magistrale, T. & Ferreira, P. 1990. Sweet Mama Wanda Tells Fortunes: An Interview with Wanda Coleman. Black American Literature Forum 24.3: 491–507.

Mitchell, W. J. T. 2012. Seeing Through Race. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Harvard University Press.

Nietzsche, F. 2003. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Trans. by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books.

Ryan, J. 2015. The Transformative Poetics of Wanda Coleman’s “American Sonnets”. African American Review 48.4: 415–429.

Pereira, M. 2010. Wanda Coleman. In: M. Pereira (ed.). Into a Light Brilliant and Unseen: Conversations with Contemporary Black Poets, 9–44. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Sanchez, S. 1969. Home Coming. Detroit: Broadside Press.

Werner, Craig. 1986. New Democratic Vistas. In: J. Weixlemann & Ch. J. Fontenot (eds.). Belief vs. Theory in Black American Literary Criticism, 47–84. Greenwood, Florida: The Penkevill Publishing Company.

Wiśniewski, M. 2014. Introduction. In: M. Wiśniewski (ed.) Ex(o/e)rcising Modernism, 7–9. Warszawa: SWPS.


Opublikowane
2023-10-20


Kamionowski, J. (2023) „From “where I live” to “my slave songs”: Integrity and Extension in Wanda Coleman’s Poetry”, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, (41), s. 35–54. doi: 10.15290/CR.2023.41.2.03.

Jerzy Kamionowski 
University of Białystok, Poland

Jerzy Kamionowski is an Associate Professor at the University of Białystok. His Ph.D. dissertation entitled New Wine in Old Bottles. The Virtuality of the Presented World in Angela Carter’s Fiction (1999) was written under supervision of Professor Jacek Wiśniewski, who had kindly agreed to take the Polish literature graduate under his scholarly wing. Jerzy Kamionowski is the author of Głosy z “dzikiej strefy” (Voices from the “wild zone”) (2011) on poetry of three women writers of the Black Arts Movement: Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Audre Lorde, and From the House of the Slave to the Home of the Brave. The Motif of Home in Poetry by Black Women since the late 1960s (2019). Presently, he takes interest in the poetry of the post-BAM generation, as well as the representations of the Middle Passage in African American literature.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3515-8751