#12. Wounded in the House of a Friend, by Sonia Sanchez
#12. Wounded in the House of a Friend, Sonia Sanchez
1997, Beacon Press
Sonia Sanchez is a poet and professor, and was involved in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. (Some background from Wikipedia). She lives in Philadelphia, where I live, and teaches at Temple University. I have seen her once or twice on panels and things, and thought I would check out her poetry. This book was the one I found on the library shelf, and I was intrigued by the title.
I was... disappointed by the book. Criticizing it is somewhat difficult for me; can we separate the aesthetic from the cultural, the critical preference from the conditioned one? I will say that I find most of the work here far too literal; it uses very prosey language; and it sometimes seem as if it might work well as a spoken-word performance, but on the page it falls flat. I am not sure whether it is okay for me to say that some of this work feels very amateurish to me. But that was my response to it. I don't know; does that response inherently imply that I'm missing the point?
Many of the pieces are also very political. (So I ask myself: am I saying that I don't like them because they are too political? Is that another way of saying that I don't like them because they are too black? But I will say that I have been reading Gwendolyn Brooks at the same time, a selection of her work from across her lifetime, and Brooks was extremely political as well, but she was also a good poet at her worst and brilliant at the top of her game. So it is not that I'm incapable of appreciating black poets whose work has implicit or explicit political themes.
(Maybe it's that I don't like the aesthetic of the Black Arts movement? After all, Maya Angelou's poetry -- her poetry , that is, as opposed to her prose -- spark many of the same reactions in me. Hmm.)
I will still check out Sanchez's book Homegirls and Hand Grenades, which won the American Book Award in 1985. If that is generally agreed to be Sanchez at the top of her game, then it should give me a clearer idea about what my response means
Trying to help me make sense of this disappointed, and somewhat scornful, reaction, I quote two book reviews from Amazon that respond in different ways to Wounded in the House of a Friend:.
From Publishers Weekly
Sanchez (Under a Soprano Sky), along with Nikki Giovanni, was a major player in the early 1970s as African American women began to explore feminist, political and cultural issues in poetry. Focusing on performance as an integral aspect of craft, Sanchez prepared the way for such writers as Ntozake Shange. Much of this book (her first in eight years) pays back debts; in a mixture of poetry and prose, she commemorates a quarter century of Essence magazine and offers memorial pieces for James Baldwin and Malcolm X. Sanchez is at her best, however, when she places her speaker in the furious center of criminal action: a raped woman's detailed account of her attack, a woman trading her seven-year-old daughter for crack ("he held the stuff out/ to me and i cdn't remember/ her birthdate i cdn't remember/ my daughter's face"). A brilliant narrative is offered in the voice of a Harlem woman struggling with (and eventually hammered to death by) her junkie granddaughter. After such emotion, Sanchez turns to a series of minuscule poems based on Japanese forms that blunt rather than intensify her breathless energy.
From Library Journal
In this collection, former National Endowment for the Arts and American Book Award winner Sanchez presents a homage to African Americans, both past and present. Neruda said political poetry is more deeply emotional than any other poetry except love poetry. But poetry is not all raw emotion; and as art, these poems usually leave much to be desired. Take for example, "it wassssssssssssssssssssss/the raping that was bad/it was the raping" and "It is not strange that we have men and women/of conscience here tonite who in defending and/defining Black culture defend the country. The world./Humanity as well." Occasionally, the language soars, but these moments are few and far between. Also included are a Nicaraguan journal in prose, poems about a young woman with a drug problem, a prose/poetry mix about an unfaithful husband, and a selection of haiku and tanka. One gets the impression the author has cleaned out her drawers to fill this hodgepodge. For large and special collections only.
Let it be noted that, myself, I do like Ntozake Shange; I did like the prose/poetry mix about the unfaithful husband; and I thought the "Harlem woman struggling with... her junkie granddaughter" was idiotic (not in concept, but in execution; that literalism again, plus tear-jerking sentimentality and stereotype, plus it's a longish poem with an ending you can see coming miles away). So neither of these reviews entirely voices my feeling. However, I am certainly closer to the second one than the first.
Well, we will try Homegirls and Hand Grenades, and see what that yields.
Has anyone else read Sanchez? Or is anyone more familiar with this particular movement, and school, than I am?
1997, Beacon Press
Sonia Sanchez is a poet and professor, and was involved in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. (Some background from Wikipedia). She lives in Philadelphia, where I live, and teaches at Temple University. I have seen her once or twice on panels and things, and thought I would check out her poetry. This book was the one I found on the library shelf, and I was intrigued by the title.
I was... disappointed by the book. Criticizing it is somewhat difficult for me; can we separate the aesthetic from the cultural, the critical preference from the conditioned one? I will say that I find most of the work here far too literal; it uses very prosey language; and it sometimes seem as if it might work well as a spoken-word performance, but on the page it falls flat. I am not sure whether it is okay for me to say that some of this work feels very amateurish to me. But that was my response to it. I don't know; does that response inherently imply that I'm missing the point?
Many of the pieces are also very political. (So I ask myself: am I saying that I don't like them because they are too political? Is that another way of saying that I don't like them because they are too black? But I will say that I have been reading Gwendolyn Brooks at the same time, a selection of her work from across her lifetime, and Brooks was extremely political as well, but she was also a good poet at her worst and brilliant at the top of her game. So it is not that I'm incapable of appreciating black poets whose work has implicit or explicit political themes.
(Maybe it's that I don't like the aesthetic of the Black Arts movement? After all, Maya Angelou's poetry -- her poetry , that is, as opposed to her prose -- spark many of the same reactions in me. Hmm.)
I will still check out Sanchez's book Homegirls and Hand Grenades, which won the American Book Award in 1985. If that is generally agreed to be Sanchez at the top of her game, then it should give me a clearer idea about what my response means
Trying to help me make sense of this disappointed, and somewhat scornful, reaction, I quote two book reviews from Amazon that respond in different ways to Wounded in the House of a Friend:.
From Publishers Weekly
Sanchez (Under a Soprano Sky), along with Nikki Giovanni, was a major player in the early 1970s as African American women began to explore feminist, political and cultural issues in poetry. Focusing on performance as an integral aspect of craft, Sanchez prepared the way for such writers as Ntozake Shange. Much of this book (her first in eight years) pays back debts; in a mixture of poetry and prose, she commemorates a quarter century of Essence magazine and offers memorial pieces for James Baldwin and Malcolm X. Sanchez is at her best, however, when she places her speaker in the furious center of criminal action: a raped woman's detailed account of her attack, a woman trading her seven-year-old daughter for crack ("he held the stuff out/ to me and i cdn't remember/ her birthdate i cdn't remember/ my daughter's face"). A brilliant narrative is offered in the voice of a Harlem woman struggling with (and eventually hammered to death by) her junkie granddaughter. After such emotion, Sanchez turns to a series of minuscule poems based on Japanese forms that blunt rather than intensify her breathless energy.
From Library Journal
In this collection, former National Endowment for the Arts and American Book Award winner Sanchez presents a homage to African Americans, both past and present. Neruda said political poetry is more deeply emotional than any other poetry except love poetry. But poetry is not all raw emotion; and as art, these poems usually leave much to be desired. Take for example, "it wassssssssssssssssssssss/the raping that was bad/it was the raping" and "It is not strange that we have men and women/of conscience here tonite who in defending and/defining Black culture defend the country. The world./Humanity as well." Occasionally, the language soars, but these moments are few and far between. Also included are a Nicaraguan journal in prose, poems about a young woman with a drug problem, a prose/poetry mix about an unfaithful husband, and a selection of haiku and tanka. One gets the impression the author has cleaned out her drawers to fill this hodgepodge. For large and special collections only.
Let it be noted that, myself, I do like Ntozake Shange; I did like the prose/poetry mix about the unfaithful husband; and I thought the "Harlem woman struggling with... her junkie granddaughter" was idiotic (not in concept, but in execution; that literalism again, plus tear-jerking sentimentality and stereotype, plus it's a longish poem with an ending you can see coming miles away). So neither of these reviews entirely voices my feeling. However, I am certainly closer to the second one than the first.
Well, we will try Homegirls and Hand Grenades, and see what that yields.
Has anyone else read Sanchez? Or is anyone more familiar with this particular movement, and school, than I am?