Ostinato Vamps

by Coleman, Wanda

• ISBN13: 9780822958338
• ISBN10: 0822958333
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Summary

A collection of poetic works by the award-winning author of Bathwater Wine and Mercurochrome seeks to defy stereotypes and observes the challenges of life while exploring such themes as eroticism, despair, humor, and tragedy. Original.

Author Biography

Wanda Coleman, unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles, is the winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bathwater Wine, a bronzemedal finalist for the National Book Award in 2001 for Mercurochrome, and the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. Renowned for her electrifying readings, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband

Table of Contents

Red Noir
Revenants	p. 3
Yellowed Parchment	p. 4
Nipples Like Thorns Piercing Thoughts	p. 5
Relocation on the Edge	p. 6
78 rpms on a Piper's Dream	p. 7
Wichita Down West Home	p. 8
Cold Meat & Three Empty Shells	p. 9
Lady Sings the Blues 1969	p. 11
Thirty Seconds over America	p. 13
Requiem for a Nest	p. 14
Almost Pregnant	p. 15
Meanwhile in San Francisco	p. 17
Art & Embellishment	p. 18
Cool Cats Snap Spats	p. 19
Things Go Sour	p. 20
Red Noir	p. 22
Red Eye & Black Beans	p. 23
Los Angeles Nocturne	p. 24
Ostinato Vamps
Broken Rhythms	p. 29
Jazz Theory 101	p. 30
Dream Fever	p. 31
Ostinato Vamp	p. 32
Plum Hunger	p. 33
Soul Traveler	p. 34
Mahalia Jones	p. 36
The Boys of Loco Heights	p. 37
Fragments of an Essay	p. 38
Straight Out of Autumn	p. 40
Likes Tangerine Sushi	p. 41
A Second Death	p. 42
After the Rampage	p. 43
Designer Bag and All	p. 44
Translations from the Night	p. 46
The African beneath the American	p. 48
Faruk Yellow	p. 49
Revisiting Fear and Memphis	p. 50
White Wall Syndrome--A Study	p. 51
Lorde Cento	p. 53
The Woman in the Mirror	p. 54
Darwinian Ebb	p. 56
Two Fugues & a Prayer
Night Widow Fugue	p. 59
Sorceress of Muntu	p. 74
Prayer for America Reborn	p. 90
The Weighing of My Heart
Fool's Progress	p. 95
Gone Exits	p. 96
Sour Apples	p. 97
The history of my body	p. 98
Slave Driven	p. 99
Olio Intaglio	p. 100
About Our Unborn	p. 103
Baptism	p. 104
The Museum of You	p. 105
The Weighing of My Heart	p. 107
Peace	p. 111
Passing through the Blood	p. 112
Exoteric	p. 113
Acknowledgments	p. 115
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