Author Description

Heavy Daughter Blues was the first selected poetry and prose of Wanda Coleman written between 1968 and 1986 (now replaced by the more recent Black Sparrow edition, Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems edited by Terrance Hayes.) These poems and stories reflect the daily struggles of a poet-performer whose fight to survive is “plagued by the fear of not making it” (“Trying To Get In”). Poverty is an ever-present set of "claws” to grapple with, and in Coleman's realistically-apprehended present there’s no way to beat the Man at his own game: “it's high noon / the sheriff is an IBM executive / it shoots 120 words per secretary / i reach for the white-out / it's too fast for me / i'm blown to blazes” (“Job Hunter”). Passion and desire yield insights, also betrayals: “yes i do think of you / when i'm with him / even laugh out loud / remembering our summer's fun / how it might be fun again / still, something in his eyes / i do not see in yours” (“Four Men”). Poet Wanda Coleman provides a how-to manual, revealing some immediate ways not only to “fix a bad man hex” or “do dirty better,” but to keep one's dream-light burning amid the aching rush of dark and anxious times.