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.
Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature's forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.—Maya Angelou
Praise for Sonia Sanchez
"Only a poet with an innocent heart can exorcise so much pain with so much beauty."—Isabel Allende
"Sanchez's powers of empathy shine with rare luminosity."—Paula Friedman, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Does Your House Have Lions? is a work of love and art that confirms Ms. Sanchez as one of the nation's finest poets."—Haki R. Madhubuti
"The poetry of Sonia Sanchez is full of power and yet always clean and uncluttered. It makes you wish you had thought those thoughts, felt those emotions, and, above all, expressed them so effortlessly and so well."—Chinua Achebe
"Her songs of destruction and loss scrape the heart; her praise songs thunder and revitalize. We need these songs for our journey together into the next century."—Joy Harjo
14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till)
1.
Your limbs buried
in northern muscle carry
their own heartbeat
2.
Mississippi…
alert with
conjugated pain
3.
young Chicago
stutterer whistling
more than flesh
4.
your pores
wild stars embracing
southern eyes
5.
foot prints blooming
in the night remember
your blood
6.
in this southern
classroom summer settles
into winter
7.
i hear your
pulse swallowing
neglected light
8.
your limbs
fly off the ground
little birds…
9.
we taste the
blood ritual of
southern hands
10.
blue midnite
breaths sailing on
smiling tongues
11.
say no words
time is collapsing
in the woods
12.
a mother’s eyes
remembering a cradle
pray out loud
13.
walking in Mississippi
i hold the stars
between my teeth
14.
your death
a blues, i could not
drink away.
Publisher: Beacon Press
Distributor: Random House, Inc.
Publication Date: 02-01-2010
Pages: 120
Measurements: 8.77in X 5.68in X .55in X .625lb
