Customer Reviews

Black Wings & Blind Angels

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Sapphire's poetry is raw, rough and powered. She layers metaphor and creates images with a jazzy and urban tone. From her painful life she spawned this book, a masterpiece of emotion, as another hit to the poetic community, which is still rocking from "American Dreams."

Sapphire's poems are one-two punches. They are fiercely defiant. They are reconciliatory. The combination makes them unbelievably lovely. In that way, these poems are unlike many we see today: they are without pretense and overwhelmingly courageous.

Shappire's music is beautiful, indeed. Rarely is a poet able to show us such tragedy and compel us to read on. Never once did I question her ability to guide me through the experience of these poems. What a tremendous success!!

Sapphire's Black Wings & Blind Angels provides the poetry of black writer Sapphire, which examines the black experience in America and the effects of racism and urban violence. A compelling account packed with vivid free verse images.

it's hard to write good poetry, as the form of poetry lends itself to self-indulgence and excess. this dreadful collection is a perfect example of that and to call it an expression of the black experience is an insult to all my sisters and brothers.

degrading stereotypes of black folks to make a buck, flat writing, self-promoting "bad girl" posturing, all just like the ultra-lame Push novel, yep, she sure does do it again, much to the dismay of most black people I hang with. please, Sapphire, spare us any more of your "art".

i was disappointed by this book of poetry because the imagery is kind of heavyhanded and the topics really dreary. poetry is hard to like anyway because people get so self-indulgent saying any old thing. this is another example of that.