Bathwater Wine [Paperback]

Wanda Coleman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1574230646 | ISBN-13: 978-1574230642 | Publication Date: July 1, 1998 | Edition: First Edition

Winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coleman's seventh book with Black Sparrow is an encyclopedic, moment-by-moment accounting of left coast rage, witness and transcendence. The poems move agilely from a tragic (yet comedic) resignation, to verbal riffs and hijinks, to direct, in-your-face declarations of resistance and anger. Primarily a collection of disparate shorter poems, the volume is punctuated by longer sequences. The strong opening series, "Dreamwalk," is a poignant, quasi-confessional, free-associative account of the author's adolescence: "ugly and more ugly. you are a card carrying / member of the FBI (Fat Black Idiots) and you arrest and/ jail them in your mind for crimes against your heart." Later in the sequence, the need to escape inspires a fecund, but suspicious, alternate reality for the young poet: "you become a shadow in pursuit of shadows. you/ smoke imaginary imported German fags while sipping/ imaginary English sherry barely clad in blood red/ silken fantasies while straddling a rattan chair on/ the balcony of a Cuban bordello." Another grouping, "The Ron Narrative Reconstructions," maps the activity of a poet's mind with vignettes ("in the midcity laundromat, we two-step to a piped-in salsa..."), wry theoretical musings (a digression on "poetoerotic rape": "the plundering and transmogrification of another's form... a physical release akin to sexual orgasm"), and reliance on the eternal powers of language, and the basic need everyone has to be a part of another's life. The poem is emblematic of the best qualities of this large, somewhat sprawling, formally diverse yet occasionally loose, book of poetry.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

[Coleman] is a poet whose angry and extravagant music, so far beyond baroque, has been making itself heard across the divide between West Coast and East, establishment and margins, slams and seminars, across the too-American rift among races and genders, for two decades. [She] excels in public performance ... but her poems do not require [her] physical presence: they perform themselves. --Marilyn Hacker

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Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574230646
• ISBN-13: 978-1574230642
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,553,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An All American Poetry Book!, April 1, 2000

By 

sloopy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bathwater Wine (Paperback)

Bathwater Wine by Wanda Coleman is a book of poetry that everyone can relate to on one level or another. The poetry in this book is easy to read, realistic, and down to earth. Coleman writes about life events that many people can relate to. She has poured her heart and soul on the pages and the reader can easily see stages of her life in the poems. The book showcases all forms of poetry including sonnets and songs. Among the poems are "Jazz Whine," which is a dedication to Jazz music, but also a look at life lessons, "Levels of Meaning," which looks at what it means to be a woman and the many images it partakes, and "Firesong 1964," which is a dedication to the monk in Viet Nam who showed the world what he believed in. This book is a must for anyone who is discovering modern poetry for the first time. It is deep, but easy. It is Coleman, but it is also you and me. It is an All American book as portrayed by both the poems inside and the patriotic red, white, and blue cover. It is an excellent collection of poems from one of today's most profound poets.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Huzzah!!, August 23, 2001

By 

Mark Begley "Letterpressed.com" (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bathwater Wine (Paperback)

Wanda Coleman is quickly becoming my favorite American poet. This collection, which I'm reading at the same time with her latest book MERCUROCRHOME, only reinforces my stance. As a young white male I shied away from Coleman's writing for quite some time, thinking, however ignorant this may seem, that I'd find nothing in common with her, nothing to relate to. When you're wrong you're wrong, and when I finally did dive into her work (her first book MAD DOG, BLACK LADY) I felt like I did when I first read Bukowski: I had found something special. Some have deemed Coleman as the "Black, female Bukowski," but of course this is too simple a comparison. They both hailed from the underbelly of LA, and both can't seem to get the city out of their blood. Coleman's poetry does share something with Bukowski's early lyricism, but beyond that there is no real comparison (the only other thing I can think of is that Black Sparrow has published nearly all of their books). Coleman's work is more studied and stylized, more diverse in technique and scope. I have had the great pleasure and honor now of actually publishing some of Coleman's work, and her power continues to blow me away. I look forward to every new piece she puts out there.