![\"Wicked](\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2021\/03\/C314EFDF-4B16-4650-91F6-9F69ABCBFDA5-199x300.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nBlack Sparrow Press, 2020<\/p>\n
Paperback, $15.95, 224 pages<\/p>\n
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One of the few good things to come out of 2020 was Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems<\/em> by Wanda Coleman, skillfully edited by poet Terrance Hayes. Describing Coleman\u2019s work is not an easy task. Her outspoken work stretches for miles and leaves shockwaves where it lands. Hayes describes her as a \u201cgrenade of brilliance, boasts, and braggadocio.\u201d Having lived on the edges of the poetry elitists, her body of work often neglected, she was still referred to as the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles by those who valued her work. A native daughter of L.A., born in 1946 in the Watts neighborhood, Coleman also wrote novels, nonfiction, and short stories. Known mostly for her poetry, she left behind a large volume of work and a legion of fans.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wicked Enchantment<\/em> includes selected poems from eight of her published collections. The book opens with an illuminating section entitled \u201cWanda In Her Own Words\u201d that includes quotes from her other writing and interviews. There, Coleman says, \u201cMy delicious dilemma is language. How I structure it. How the fiction of history structures me. And as I\u2019ve become more and more shattered, my tongue has become tangled . . .\u00a0 I am glassed in by language as well as by the barriers of my dark skin and financial embarrassment.\u201d Thus, the book is off and running, and delicious dilemmas of many kinds run through the entire collection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Coleman\u2019s voice as a Black woman fighting against gender and racial oppression is undeniably striking. Through poems like \u201cEssay on Language,\u201d Coleman gives the poetic middle finger to naysayers and cowards, \u201ctrying to be the \/ best i can spurred by blackness but they keep telling me the \/ best fashion in which to escape linguistic ghettoization \/ is to \/ ignore the actuality of blackness blah blah blah and it will \/ cease to \/ have factual power over my life. which doesn\u2019t \/ make sense to me . . .\u201d In those lines, she mocks the ivory tower advising her to take it easy and to be nice. Instead, she is \u201cspurred by blackness\u201d to sniff out racisms and other degradations, and she doesn\u2019t hesitate to make them plain and clear. In \u201cEssay on Language 6,\u201d Coleman writes,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n there are those who have no passion but who<\/p>\n are sensitive enough to sense the void within<\/p>\n and therefore must imagine passion. i often find<\/p>\n that among that kind, there are those who<\/p>\n detest the truly passionate out of an envious rage<\/p>\n that has always faced us passionate ones.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sometimes the poems are surprising, laced with humor and irreverence. The title alone of \u201cI Ain\u2019t Yo Earthmama\u201d suggests trouble, and then the first line throws down the gauntlet: \u201cboogers are not my forte.\u201d Exactly whose forte are boogers? Despite her claim, Coleman does quite well with boogers, at least as a jumping off point. From there, she goes on to combine Poseidon, experimental sex, and vomit in this juggernaut of a poem.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Coleman continually pushes into new territory, seeking poetic freedom. In \u201cDream 924,\u201d the speaker drives a car, \u201cand i\u2019m flying as the speedometer \/ needle presses urgently against the edge. ah \u2013 the power. i \/ am looking for the answer. and i move forward . . .\u201d In that speeding urgency toward freedom, Coleman has picked up descriptions like, as Hayes has described her, a \u201cflesh-eating poet,\u201d while others have described her as simply mean. Coleman\u2019s intensity can be felt throughout Wicked Enchantments<\/em> with lines such as \u201cpseudo-intellectuals with suck-holes for brains\u201d (from \u201cAmerican Sonnet 3\u201d), but it\u2019s the quiet moments in poems such as \u201cThe Saturday Afternoon Blues\u201d where Coleman\u2019s mastery is best experienced:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n saturday afternoons are killers<\/p>\n when the air is brisk and warm<\/p>\n ol\u2019 sun he steady whispers<\/p>\n soon the life you know will be done<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This languid summer scene, which could feel invigorating, instead showcases Coleman\u2019s adept ability to layer grief within quiet, even sunny, moments. To hark back to the speeding car from \u201cDream 924,\u201d that same car that pushes the speed limit is perhaps most powerful when simply idling in the sun, all its inherent force just waiting beneath the hood.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n An already strong collection, the book hits hyper-drive with the inclusion of work from Coleman\u2019s last book, Mercurochrome<\/em>. In \u201cAmerican Sonnet 94,\u201d she writes:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n weeper. this is your execution<\/p>\n weeper. this is your groveling stone<\/p>\n weeper. yours is the burst & burnings of a city<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With each \u201cweeper,\u201d followed by those strangely indefinite almost percussive periods, Coleman hits a bass drum of sorrow, and the propulsive music continues throughout the book\u2019s final section. The poems here jump as if alive, as if charged from within. \u201cThiefheart\u201d is full of stunning one-liners\u2014\u201ci\u2019d steal the t from the end of time\u201d\u2014and ends with a line that seems achingly prescient, given our current American moment of racial discord and political upheaval: \u201ci\u2019d steal the poison from this muthaland.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Coleman\u2019s poems are electric and profoundly inspiring. They make readers want to write poems, to read more poems, to have more faith in poetry\u2014more faith in the difficult task of living\u2014and to shove this book into as many hands as possible. If someone is disenchanted with poetry, or with the state of the world, I recommend reading Wicked Enchantment<\/em>. Wanda Coleman\u2019s poems turn on the lights. They set off sparks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Coleman\u2019s poems are electric and profoundly inspiring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6200,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[6,347,1789,1790],"class_list":["post-6199","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-book-review","tag-wanda-coleman","tag-wicked-enchantment"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n