Wanda Coleman Books

THE RIOT INSIDE ME: More Trials and Tremors is everything the 60s, 70s and 80s were--turbulent waves of social, political and emotional upheaval that segue into placid pools of self-acceptance, artistic talent and bittersweet reflection. With raw candor and compelling prose, Wanda Coleman vividly recreates her journey to the woman she is now--an awesome whirlwind of extraordinary literary stature.

Coleman's personal history from the 1950's to 2005, is revealed through essays, interviews, journals and letters--creating an autobiography that is not only a testament to the enduring perseverance of one black woman, but of her willingness to share the humor, as well as the tears, which litter the highways and side streets of her incredible life.

In an age when the memoir has taken a beating, Coleman's THE RIOT INSIDE ME emerges as an example of not only how beautiful, but how powerful a memoir can be when executed in the essence of the art.

Reviewed by Cxandra
for The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

I respect Robert P. Beveridge's review, but I don't see the distinction he's making between Coleman's "scalpel" poems and her "automatic writing" poems. The "walking" quote he singled out for criticism comes from one of the more-effective pieces, in my opinion. This may come down to a matter of taste. I wonder if Wanda Coleman herself would agree that poetry is supposed to elevate the language. She doesn't seem to be trying to "elevate" anything. She seems to be groping at the limits of language to express the kind of pain that usually shocks people mute.

If you have never read any of Coleman's poetry before, dive on in. She is a gifted writer with one foot in the black oral tradition and the other firmly rooted in the American experience. A previous review of this book complained about Coleman's inability to spell certain words, such as come and enough, correctly. Obviously, this reviewer has his head buried in the Ivory Tower. It seems fairly remedial to have to point out that Coleman purposely misspells these and other words: she is trying to make a poetic point! I suggest reading the poem "Essay on Language" (a version of which also appears in her "Hand Dance" collection) for a further understanding of why she chooses to write in a style that reflects her life and her experience. Standard English is nothing but a dialect, you know.

If you are looking for gripping, emotional, passionate poetry that tells a woman's side of the story, pick up Heavy Daughter Blues. You won't be disappointed.

Let's not start with the spelling errors that are consistent enough that they can't be editorial mistakes. Let's not start with the subject matter, which wavers over the line of political polemic once too often. Let's not start with the scareligious procedure of putting lines above the poem that explain it. Instead, let's start with the definition of poetry itself and the basic idea, always there even if not stated, that one of the primary functions of poetry is to elevate the language in some way, that indefinable something that makes you realize a poem is a poem and not just random thoughts brokwn up into lines.

There are times, more times than can be coincidence, that Wanda Coleman's work strays over that line of language elevation. The woman obviously has a command of the language that she is capable of unfolding and wielding with scalpel-like precision when she wants to:

when god passed out the baby fat she was first in line she wasn't pretty [enough] to be a j.a.p. lost her virginity in the back seat of a cadillac her shrink diagnosed her as manic repressive

anorexia as goddess words so think you're hungry again an hour after you eat them

but unfortunately such moments are all too rare in this eighteen-year two-hundred-twenty page compendium of work. Most of it sounds more like it came from the freely-flowing pen of those too drunk, or too tired, to do anything but automatic writing. While there are some poets who worked at their best that way-- Desnos, Bukowski, and a handful of others come to mind-- the majority who try to do it fail miserably.

she walks walking walked all through life walks restless like her people waiting to see what happens knowing it will never happen until after she's dead

...and the walking shall continue until we can walk no more.

Now, I'm all too willing to kick a lot of swine out of the way to find a few pearls, but there are some things that will make it an annoying process, like an inability to spell "enough" and "come" correctly for two hundred twenty pages-- especially when your command and grasp of the English language is at least at the college level. By the time I got to the end of it, I was skimming pretty hard.

I collect Grable memorabilia which is why I bought this book. A rather depressing book of poetry - can't say I would recommend buying the book.