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The Transformative Poetics of Wanda Coleman’s American Sonnets
- African American Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 48, Number 4, Winter 2015
- pp. 415-429
- 10.1353/afa.2015.0048
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article examines the recurring formal traits, themes, and political concerns motivating Wanda Coleman’s 100-poem American Sonnets sequence. I argue that through her transformations of the sonnet form and her attention to current social issues, Coleman helps to define a new movement in experimental black poetics. Her work responds directly to poetic predecessors and contemporary writers while amassing a wide range of compositional strategies that both acknowledge her roots in the Black Arts Movement and mark out new creative ground.