Prolific
Poet Wanda Coleman Shares Her Art
by Ariella Cohen
As
award winning poet, playwright, fiction writer, journalist
and Days of Our Lives scriptwriter Wanda Coleman cackled, crooned,
sang and read selections from her expansive collection of writing
on Wednesday night, the Oberlin audience couldnt escape the
metaphor titling her latest National Book Award nominated book of
poetry, Mercurochrome.
An aptly titled book wherein sonnets are able to tell living pain,
joy and the passages between, Mercurochrome is a salve made up of
mercurial compounds and dabbed on open wounds as remedy.
Upon her receiving the nomination for the National Book Award Judge
said, Wanda Colemans poetry stings, stains and ultimately
helps heal wounds like the old-fashioned mercurochrome of her brilliant
title.... these searing, soaring poems help us to repair the fractures
of human difference and feel what it is to be made whole again.
Coleman opened her reading with some guidance, letting the audience
know that her work addressed the ongoing tension or dialogue
between content and form, and that she was about to strike
a writerly pose. But even after that bit of friendly wisdom,
Colemans several dozen listeners were stunned silent as she
launched into the evenings first poem, Neruda,
a selection from her seventh book, Hand Dance.
Colemans poetry catches readers when and where they dont
expect it. Neruda starts soft and slow, Few quiet
hours/ I spent them soaking in my tub with my neruda.
By the next stanza however, Colemans tenor had filled Wilder
101 with a beat that wavered between jazz saxophone, hip-hop lyrics
and an aching Spanish love poem. In the breaks between laughter
and another line of poetry her ability to fluidly move between form
and content became clear. Colemans audience, a broad-reaching
sample of the Oberlin community, was enraptured by the drama in
her poetry.
I love the complex combination of humor, passion, anger and
grief that runs through so many of these poems. It just makes the
hair on the back of my neck stand up, professor of creative
writing Dan Chaon said.
Coleman writes on what she calls cultural clash. I
look for points of disjuncture as I move through the culture. I
look for these paces and they look for me, Coleman said. On
sunset boulevard a begger accosts me/ for spare change. I hand him
my collected neruda/ while my lover takes siesta I walk down to/
the neighborhood bar for a game of pool solo. I order/ dos besos.
I put a quarter in the juke and notice/ all selections read neruda.
And as the poems continued, listeners, carried by Colemans
voice, delved further into the writers native Los Angeles
cityscape, their own experiences and another gritty world of exacting
rhyme schemes, line-breaks and lines like cross-eyed cornflake
yellow auspex of urban blather. Coleman isnt shy about
clashing language, sticking a mothafucka next to a chassis
or a nostrum. She keeps a 1958 Rogets Thesaurus
next to her computer.
I was one of those kids who liked to read the dictionary,
then later I had a workshop leader who made me go back to looking
up, finding all sorts of words. In the dictionary and then as a
medical secretary I transcribed all these crazy words. I enjoy word-playing.
I use the [sophisticated] words to enrich the language. I like to
think I am using them well. I like to think myself a master of language,
Coleman said.
Born in 1946 and raised in the Los Angeles community of Watts, a
black neighborhood known for its 1965 rebellion, Coleman grew up
in a highly politicized, creative time. As the Black American political
and social movement took off, Coleman became a player. All
these creative workshops sprang up in the post- Kennedy years, [such
as] Johnsons Great Society Program, and I was a beneficiary,
Coleman said.
Growing up reading the writers of her parents generation,
such as Richard Wright and Baldwin as well as the white writers
she learned in school and bought at the local bookstores, Coleman
dreamt of becoming one of Americas greatest writers. I
wanted to be the best damn writer I could be, she said. As
a black writer it is a problem for me that I am responsible for
busting the stereotypes of black writers. I feel what
is Western is mine, what is American is mine
.I am black, but
a writer. Thats duality, Coleman said.
Supporting herself as she pursued this goal, Coleman worked all
sides of the writing arena, going from soap writer, where she was
the only black member of an ensemble writing team responsible for
creating the minds and experiences of soap characters, to writing
teacher, to magazine editor. Over the years, she remained in L.A.,
traveling and spending time in New York but always returning to
Southern California. When asked by first-year Alec Scott about her
experience as a writer of color in L.A., Coleman responded with
the emotional frankness that colors many of her poems.
Dont waste the time [coming to L.A. to write]. Dont
let yourself go through the changes cause, baby, you will be plucked,
gutted like a chicken, she said.
Colemans epic incantation to her native city started off with
To love L.A. is to love more than a city, and like a
poetry slam gold-medalist, her words only got faster and tighter
as she evoked: holding a double thick rich malted or something
better between tight thighs without hitting the accelerator,
and
accents that change as fast as the street lights
in this third world gangbang.
The heat was blowing in Wilder 101, and by the readings end
Coleman was toweling sweat from her brow and slowing her pace as
she left us with her final cut, Make believe is the only reality.
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