Black Wings & Blind Angels: Poems [Paperback]

Sapphire (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2000

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.

Editorial Reviews

From 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 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From 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 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679767312
• ISBN-13: 978-0679767312
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,206,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sapphire was born in 1950 and spent her first twelve years on army bases in California and Texas. As a teenager she lived in South Philadelphia and Los Angeles. She graduated from City College in New York and received an MFA from Brooklyn College. From 1983 to 1993 she lived in Harlem, where she taught reading and writing to teenagers and adults. She lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Equal opportunity degradation, October 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Black Wings & Blind Angels (Hardcover)

Poor Ramona. We all knew PUSH, a decent first novel, would be a hard act to follow and we hoped she could pull it off. Not! These poems glamorize abuse and degrade every group - black, women, homosexual, white, heterosexual - they address. Saddest of all, the "poet" degrades - and plays - herself. Big time. Don't waste your money on this one.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Black Wings & Blind Angels is a brutal reading, June 16, 2010

By 

D. A. Holiday (Albany, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Black Wings & Blind Angels: Poems (Paperback)

This is a disturbing collection of prose from Sapphire. I am giving her a high rating because I enjoy her work, despite it being raw and honest (especially in this collection). I don't mind the profanity and the honesty that she depends on to narrate her telling, it is just that as a male I am a little sensitive to this kind of writing.

I realize that violence (against women) is what Sapphire is trying to relate to her readers/audience, but she forgets, I think, that an audience that might be too young to be reading this material might interpret the subject matter differently than a more mature audience. I read a lot of poetry and prose, and even moderate a prison workshop (and even I would not expose inmates to much of this material), and I even write my own "serious/honest/raw" prose, but I had to put the book aside at times because of the shocking text. And, is that what the writer is doing in some of the "Gorilla in the Mist" pieces? Striving to shock us. To disgust us. More importantly, can this text be read/performed aloud? I would think not.

Many of the pieces are too brutal to the eyes and senses and that takes away from the underlying message that I think Sapphire wants to make or leave us as reader and audience with. In short, I think she goes just a little overboard with a number of these pieces.

I like Sapphire's work. I own and read American Dreams (first) and Push (aka Precious) and some of the Gorilla Mist subject matter was in American Dreams, but I wasn't expecting the author/writer to be as brutal with language and text to get her message across.

If you're a fan, give the book a try, just proceed with caution, and, certainly, be cautious in allowing younger readers near this material.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another urban landmark from Sapphire, February 5, 2009

By 

Paul Skiff (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Wings & Blind Angels (Hardcover)

From her early days when you could only hear her speak her words live Sapphire has been uncompromising, not eager to please (to say the least), and seemingly more than comfortable with the difficulties she presents through her poetry. Having witnessed her progress, one gets from this published volume the sense that she is still rising to her peak and has much more to offer. 'Controversy' comes to her from those who are predisposed to their own disgust and ill-equiped to face the results of how one may embrace the shadows or 'demons' that overpopulate the world we've created, get to be on speaking terms with them, and more than survive. This volume of poems hints that she is still finding things out about herself, lives with no fear, and long ago stopped waiting for the rules. Today there are multitudes of young poets who take on the spiritual horrors of the anti-society we live in. But there are no poets who match the scathingly beautiful voice Sapphire continues to make loud.
If the two companies suing eachother in court over the rights to profit from the movie version of her novel Push don't get squashed under the influence of her power we'll soon have an emminently consumable form of her work. You can always hunt down Sapphire speaking her landmark poem Wild Thing live on the CD recording Nuyorican Symphony, Poetry Live from the Knitting Factory, if you want to experience her work the way it was meant to be.