Sonia Sanchez Biography and Criticism

I love Sonia Sanchez. Don't you? In the Fall of 2001, Sonia taught at Howard University and I was in her Creative Writing--Poetry class. It was awesome. I wrote an article on her that was featured in The Hilltop, our campus newspaper. This same article entitled, "Sonia Sanchez Speaks at the MLK Library" was also online at The Black World Today.

Sonia at Def Jam Fall 2001

Please click on the links to read more about her, this woman, phenomenally, my friend, teacher, and mentor who spoke at the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, DC to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

L to R (middle row: Chris Jessica Care Moore, Quraysh, Samiya Bashir, Sonia Sanchez, Shani)

(front row center: me, Jamie Walker)

Jiton, Jamie, Sonia, Kerry-Ann

Me, Jiton, Sonia, Carolyn

I wrote a tanka for Sonia one evening after reading Under A Soprano Sky and it is as follows:

let me grind yo words inhale

yo scent of wisdom become

yo amen corner

testifyin cuz

yo words rock deep inside me

Note: This tanka was also published in Sable Literary Magazine (Winter 2002)

To read more poems by me, click here. Also check out my forthcoming Poetry Collection December 2003 in Bookstores Everywhere!

Interested in reading more books by Sonia? Here are a few!

For Sweet Honey in the Rock

by Sonia Sanchez

(Listen to Sonia read this poem)

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes

amid rumors of death,

calling out to everyone who would listen

it is time to move us all into another century

time for freedom and racial and sexual justice

time for women and children and men time for hands unbound

i had come into the city wearing peaceful breasts

and the spaces between us smiled

i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes.

And they followed us in their cars with their computers

and their tongues crawled with caterpillars

and they bumped us off the road turned over our cars,

and they bombed our buildings killed our babies,

and they shot our doctors maintaining our bodies,

and their courts changed into confessionals

but we kept on organizing we kept on teaching believing

loving doing what was holy moving to a higher ground

even though our hands were full of slaughtered teeth

but we held out our eyes delirious with grace.

I'm gonna treat everybody right

I'm gonna treat everybody right til I die.

I'm gonna treat everybody right

I'm gonna treat everybody right til I die.

come. i say come, you sitting still in domestic bacteria

come. i say come, you standing still in double-breasted mornings

come. i say come, and return to the fight.

this fight for the earth

this fight for our children

this fight for our life

we need your hurricane voices

we need your sacred hands

i say come, sister, brother to the battlefield

come into the rain forests

come into the hood

come into the barrio

come into the schools

come into the abortion clinics

come into the prisons

come and caress our spines

i say come, wrap your feet around justice

i say come, wrap your tongues around truth

i say come, wrap your hands with deeds and prayer

you brown ones

you yellow ones

you black ones

you gay ones

you white ones

you lesbian ones

Comecomecomecomecome to this battlefield

called life, called life, called life....

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield

I'm gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

Excerpted from:

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems. NY: Beacon Press, 1999.

Catch the Fire

by Sonia Sanchez

(For Bill Cosby)

(Sometimes I Wonder:

What to say to you now

in the soft afternoon air as you

hold us all in a single death?)

I say--

Where is your fire?

I say--

Where is your fire?

You got to find it and pass it on

from you to me from me to her from her

to him from the son to the father from the

brother to the sister from the daughter to

the mother from the mother to the child.

Where is your fire? I say where is your fire?

Can't you smell it coming out of our past?

The fire of living............Not dying

The fire of loving...........Not killing

The fire of Blackness....Not gangster shadows.

Where is our beautiful fire that gave light

to the world?

The fire of pyramids;

The fire that burned through the holes of

slaveships and made us breathe;

The fire that made guts into chitterlings;

The fire of sit-ins and marches that made

us jump boundaries and barriers;

The fire that took street talk and sounds

and made righteous imhotep raps.

Where is your fire, the torch of life

full of Nzingha and Nat Turner and Garvey

and Du Bois and Fannie Lou Hamer and

Martin

and Malcolm and Mandela.

Sister/Sistah. Brother/Brotha. Come/Come.

CATCH YOUR FIRE.........DON'T KILL

HOLD YOUR FIRE.......DON'T KILL

LEARN YOUR FIRE.....DON'T KILL

BE THE FIRE...............DON'T KILL

Catch the fire and burn with eyes

that see our souls:

WALKING.

SINGING.

BUILDING.

LAUGHING.

LEARNING.

LOVING.

TEACHING.

BEING.

Hey. Brother/Brotha. Sister/Sistah.

Here is my hand.

Catch the fire.....and live.

live.

livelivelivelive.

live.

Excerpted from:

Wounded in the House of a Friend. MA: Beacon Press, 1995.

Sonia Sanchez and Haki Madhubuti

photos by: jamie walker

Role Call Conference * Howard University * 2002

Blues Haiku

by Sonia Sanchez

what i need is traveling

minds talktouch kisses spittouch

you swimming upstream.

Excerpted from:

Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. MA: Beacon Press, 1998.

Present

by Sonia Sanchez

This woman vomiting her

hunger over the world

this melancholy woman forgotten

before memory came

this yellow movement bursting forth like

coltrane's melodies all mouth

buttocks moving like palm trees,

this honeycoatedalabamianwoman

raining rhythm of blue/black/smiles

this yellow woman carrying beneath her breasts

pleasures without tongues

this woman whose body weaves

desert patterns,

this woman, wet with wandering,

reviving the beauty of forests and winds

is telling you secrets

gather up your odors and listen

as she sings the mold from memory.

there is no place

for a soft/black/woman.

there is no smile green enough or

summertime words warm enough to allow my growth.

and in my head

i see my history

standing like a shy child

and i chant lullabies

as i ride past on horseback

tasting the thirst of yesterday tribes

hearing the ancient/black/woman

me, singing hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya

hay-hay-hay-hay-ya-ya-ya

like a slow scent

beneath the sun

and i dance my

creation and my grandmothers gathering

from my bones like great wooden birds

spread their wings

while their long/legged/laughter

stretches the night.

and i taste the

seasons of my birth. mangoes. papayas.

drink my woman/cocunut/milks

stalk the ancient grandfathers

sipping on proud afternoons

walk like a song round my waist

tremble like a new/born/child troubled

with new breaths

and my singing

becomes the only sound of a

blue/black/magical/woman. walking.

womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking.

making pilgrimage to herself. walking.

Excerpted from:

I've Been A Woman: New and Selected Poems. IL: Third World Press, 1985.

photo: jamie walker Malcolm X

(big influence on Sonia during the 60s and Black Arts Movement)

Poem # 3

by Sonia Sanchez

I gather up

each sound

you left behind

and stretch them

on our bed.

each nite

I breathe you

and become high.

Excerpted From:

Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. MA: Beacon Press, 1998.

Poem at Thirty

by Sonia Sanchez

it is midnight

no magical bewitching

hour for me

i know only that

i am here waiting

remembering that

once as a child

i walked two

miles in my sleep.

did i know

then where i

was going?

traveling. i'm

always traveling.

i want to tell

you about me

about nights on a

brown couch when

i wrapped my

bones in lint and

refused to move.

no one touches

me anymore.

father do not

send me out

among strangers.

you you black man

stretching scraping

the mold from your body.

here is my hand.

i am not afraid

of the night.

Excerpted From:

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems. MA: Beacon Press, 1999.

Dancing

by Sonia Sanchez

i dreamt i was tangoing with

you, you held me so close

we were like the singing coming off the drums

you made me squeeze muscles

lean back on the sound

of corpuscles sliding in blood.

i heard my thighs singing.

Excerpted From:

Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. MA: Beacon Press, 1998.

A Song for Sweet Honey in the Rock

by Sonia Sanchez

see me through

your own eyes

i am here.

don't look for me

in poems

i'm not there.

don't look for me in

shadowy faces

i'm not there.

see me through

your own eyes

i am here.

once. when or with whom

i disappeared went

into hiding behind

my own skull

wasn't seen for a decade or two

wasn't seen for a decade or two.

now i am back.

carrying my life in a small bag

now i am back

holding open my hands

holding open my hands.

see me through

your own smile

i am here.

see me through

your own smell

i am here.

see me through

your own eyes

i am here

i am here...

Excerpted From:

Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums. MA: Beacon Press, 1998.

Sonia Sanchez...

truly a poet

for all seasons.....