Morning Haiku [Hardcover]

Sonia Sanchez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2010

This new volume by the much-loved poet Sonia Sanchez, her first in over a decade, is music to the ears: a collection of haiku that celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism. In her verses, we hear the sounds of Max Roach "exploding in the universe," the "blue hallelujahs" of the Philadelphia Murals, and the voice of Odetta "thundering out of the earth." Sanchez sings the praises of contemporaries whose poetic alchemy turns "words into gems": Maya Angelou, Richard Long, and Toni Morrison. And she pays homage to peace workers and civil rights activists from Rosa Parks and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to Brother Damu, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. Often arranged in strings of twelve or more, the haiku flow one into the other in a steady song of commemoration. Sometimes deceptively simple, her lyrics hold a very powerful load of emotion and meaning.

There are intimate verses here for family and friends, verses of profound loss and silence, of courage and resilience. Sanchez is innovative, composing haiku in new forms, including a section of moving two-line poems that reflect on the long wake of 9/11. In a brief and personal opening essay, the poet explains her deep appreciation for haiku as an art form. With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez's freshest, most poignant work.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Sanchez gives herself over with deep pleasure to the exacting beauty of haiku, a form she has cherished her entire writing life. Winner of the Robert Frost Medal and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award, among many other honors, Sanchez has for decades been a soaring voice in protest against racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice, and in praise of black heritage and culture. Her newest haikus are diamond distillations of complex feelings, painful history, the torrent of language, and oceanic sensuality. Inspired by an array of fellow artists, from Odetta to Max Roach, Elizabeth Catlett to Beauford Delaney, Maya Angelou to Toni Morrison, as well as Oprah Winfrey, Sanchez’s bright and dancing poems shimmer with surprising juxtapositions, unexpected flight patterns, and leap frog associations. Their brevity seems built for speed, but their lyricism and warmth inspire lingering, savoring, reading, and rereading, perhaps aloud. Try: “in the open / alley a galaxy / of dreams.” --Donna Seaman

Review

Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature's forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.—Maya Angelou

Praise for Sonia Sanchez

"Only a poet with an innocent heart can exorcise so much pain with so much beauty."—Isabel Allende

"Sanchez's powers of empathy shine with rare luminosity."—Paula Friedman, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Does Your House Have Lions? is a work of love and art that confirms Ms. Sanchez as one of the nation's finest poets."—Haki R. Madhubuti

"The poetry of Sonia Sanchez is full of power and yet always clean and uncluttered. It makes you wish you had thought those thoughts, felt those emotions, and, above all, expressed them so effortlessly and so well."—Chinua Achebe

"Her songs of destruction and loss scrape the heart; her praise songs thunder and revitalize. We need these songs for our journey together into the next century."—Joy Harjo

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (February 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807069108
• ISBN-13: 978-0807069103
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 0.6 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 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: #932,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sonia Sanchez--poet, activist, scholar--was the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University. She is the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid, though not perfect., August 8, 2011

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Morning Haiku (Paperback)

Sonia Sanchez, <strong>Morning Haiku</strong> (Beacon Press, 2010)

One of my favorite examples of people just not getting it is that of the Cult of Lovecraft. Hundreds of authors from August Derleth to Fred Chappell, of all people, have written direct-descendant works of Lovecraft. They vary widely in quality, of course, but most of them have the same basic format: take H. P.'s crrepy-crawlies and integrate them into the author's own style. Which is all well and good, and some of what has emerged from that process is pretty darned good. But then came a chap named Thomas Ligotti, who turned everything on its head. Instead of taking the creepy-crawlies and abandoning the style, Ligotti writes horrific little stories that have completely integrated Lovecraft's style, but with nary a hint of Cthulhu and company to be found. In short, Thomas Ligotti <em>gets it</em>, in a way no other author has, and as a result his stories are more "Lovecraftian" than any raft of August Derleths or Ramsey Campbells.

Needless to say, there's a parallel to be had here. American writers, or perhaps I should say "attempters", of haiku take the creepy-crawlies, most notably the syllable count, without really grasping the concepts that lie behind haiku: economy (Henderson, in <em>Haiku in English</em>, notes that 5/7/5 generally results in haiku that are too wordy. Indeed.), mysticism, nature. Nature, in fact, is so important that haiku without a link to nature aren't haiku at all, they're actually senryu. Very few American authors understand this (in fact, the only one that comes to mind off the top of my head is Nick Mamatas, whose <em>Cthulhu Senryu</em> is a perfect example).

I've read god knows how many American collections of stuff pretending to be haiku. Most of it doesn't even rate as decent senryu. And then there is Sonia Sanchez' <em>Morning Haiku</em>, which is the Thomas Ligotti of Asian poetic form, with the allowance that Sanchez is mostly writing senryu here.

"trees praising our innocence
new territories dressing our
limbs in starched bones"
("15 haiku for Toni Morrison")

Sanchez is totally focused on the image here, as regards the construction of an individual senryu, and because of that, she gets it in a way few others do. That alone makes this not only well worth the price of admission, but most likely the best book of senryu-masquerading-as-haiku by an American author you will read all year, no matter what year you read it in.

On the other hand, now that I've praised the tree, I've got to mention at least in passing that the forest is a little too message-based. Sanchez' excellent focus on the construction of each piece is just as evident when it comes to the subjects she picks, and so she often ends up paying lip service to the mystical/natural elements of the form at best. This can be a bit disappointing at times, given how well her talent at working this form comes through again and again in the book:

"footprints blooming
in the night remember
your blood"
("14 haiku for Emmett Louis Till")

...but don't let that stop you from reading this one. You want to. *** ½

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Read, June 14, 2010

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Morning Haiku (Hardcover)

Dr. Sanchez, has again proven that she is one of America's greatest poets. Morning Haiku challenges the reader to look inside their own spritual journey.