Black Wings and Blind Angels: Poems by Sapphire

From Barnes & Noble

Poet, performance artist, and author of the acclaimed novel Push, Sapphire returns with a new collection of poems that takes the reader into America's past and present, bearing testimony to the black experience in a country fragmented by war, racism, and urban and domestic violence. In Black Wings & Blind Angels Sapphire explores a wide range of provocative subjects, from the origins of celebrity and desire to lesbian separatism to childhood sexual abuse to the "justified genocide" of American Indians. In addition, "Breaking Karma (Nos. 5 through 9)" continues the sequence begun in her first book of poetry, American Dreams, and the "Gorilla in the Midst" poems, satiric vignettes that began as a meditation on the infamous racism of the Los Angeles Police Department, confront "sexual stereotypes, issues of power, and racism."

From the Publisher

With fierce candor and an unflinching eye, the highly praised author of Push journeys through the harsh realities of African American existence to find the "door to the possibility of now." The heroes that emerge from these forty-seven vigorous poems confront the agony of betrayal as they strive in their quest for self-transformation and redemption.

From the city streets to the rich landscape of dreams, each of these poems holds out the "black wings of expectation" offering the chance to emerge from the pain of the past and arrive at "the day you have been waiting for/when you would finally begin to live." At turns alarming and inspiring, the raw lyrics and piercing wisdom of Black Wings & Blind Angels remind us of Sapphire's place as a unique and fearless voice.

The Advocate - Richard Tayson

In Black Wings & Blind Angels Sapphire hammers pain until it is the shape of hope. Her poetic voice is evolving, but Sapphire is still on target. It is a must for poetry fans.

Publishers Weekly

Sapphire became a semi-celebrity for the harsh poems of abuse and recovery in her first book, American Dreams; she then made waves for the huge advance on her novel Push. This second volume of verse finds her less aggressive, mixing her hostilities and anxieties with a newly bemused nostalgia. A long prose piece portrays God as a Samoan woman who greets Sapphire's abusive father in Heaven, explaining that he has been saved because he helped his daughter succeed: "You're dead Daddy and your girl she works for me, God." Where an older persona-poem had Sapphire speak with the voice of Tina Turner, a new one has her impersonating Michael Jackson, gloating, "I buy those old songs of John & Paul / & Ringo & sell 'em for dog food commercials. I am rich." The poet declares elsewhere "It is clear/ I was not cut out for bulldyking or prostitution now"; about a lover, she explains, "I am not four, his penis/ is not my father's. My father is dead, it's my life now." Among the free-verse persona poems Sapphire even strews a few sestinas. This isn't to say she's gone soft: as in Push, her compulsively consumable stories of trauma explore the far reaches of hell before coming up for air and angels. As if to remind us that she's still dangerous, one of the volume's central images is a so-called Indian wolf trap- a salt lick that hides a razor. These poems won't convert those who dislike Sapphire's work already, and they might alienate her fans; the undecided, however, may find more clarity here than in her earlier work, and thus more means for engagement. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Sapphire's brutally honest Push may have won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's First Novelist award in 1997, but she is best known as a poet of slick-talking, nearly hallucinatory riffs on growing up poor, tough, and black in America. Spiky and uncompromising, her new poems promise more of the same. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt