{"product_id":"mercurochrome-9781574231533","title":"Mercurochrome","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA self-made writer from Black Los Angeles who lived every day with racism, poverty, violence. The triumph is in words that endure. \"Having Lost My Son, I Confront the Wreckage.\" \"The Language Beneath the Language.\" \"They Will Not Be Poets.\" \"Dreams Without Means.\" \"American Sonnets.\" This is vintage Coleman, the poet of the people.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNational Book Award in Poetry finalist, \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMercurochrome\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e is one of Coleman's most powerful collections. With humor, anger, and sorrow, she captures the deeply personal and societal forces of a Black working woman and mother, always behind in rent, always writing. She captured her world and its truths with beauty, harshness, clarity, and power. Through it all, there is passionate love and sexuality, humor and drama -- her work is full of startling confession and breathtaking power. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003elove\u003cbr\u003eas i live it seems more like mercurochrome\u003cbr\u003ethan anything else\u003cbr\u003ei can conjure up. it looks so pretty and red, \u003cbr\u003eand smells of a balmy\u003cbr\u003ecoolness when you uncap the little applicator.\u003cbr\u003ebut swab it on an\u003cbr\u003eopen sore and you nearly die under the stabbing\u003cbr\u003e burn. recovery\u003cbr\u003eleaves a vague tenderness\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTerrance Hayes says, \"Wanda Coleman was a great poet, a real in-the-flesh, flesh-eating poet who also happened to be a real black woman. Amid a life of single motherhood, multiple marriages, and multiple jobs that included waitress, medical file clerk, and screenwriter, she made poems. She denounced boredom, cowardice, the status quo. Few poets of any stripe write with as much forthrightness about poverty, about literary ambition, about depression, about our violent, fragile passions.\" \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA college drop-out, spurned by the literary establishment during her life, it's time for Wanda Coleman's courageous, impassioned, one-of-a-kind voice to reach readers everywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eColeman, Wanda:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWanda Coleman\u003c\/b\u003e--poet, storyteller and journalist--was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. Coleman was awarded the prestigious 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBathwater Wine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e from the American Academy of Poets, becoming the first African-American woman to ever win the prize, and was a bronze-medal finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry for \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMercurochrome\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e. In 2020, poet Terrance Hayes edited and introduced a selection of her work, \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWicked Enchantment: Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e, the first new collection of her work since her death in 2013.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Sparrow Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50525404397842,"sku":"9781574231533","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_82521094-fe7b-4049-9f76-f5f759aad8d1.jpg?v=1731217395","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/mercurochrome-9781574231533","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}