This Is Not a Small Voice: Selected Poems

(Paperback)

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A dazzling selection from one of the most beloved American poets, whose distinctive verse resonates around the globe hear your voice a wild sea pausing in the wind Few poets in history have possessed the irrepressible humanity and abundant positivity that characterize Sonia Sanchez's astonishing body of work. Energetic, infectious and rich with sonic exuberance, Sanchez's poems have radically transformed the direction of American poetry over the past six decades and have been an inspiration to readers around the world, including Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe. Whether it's her iconic haiku, rhythmic ballads or devastating elegies, Sanchez's luminous verse thrums with a profound generosity and an international consciousness, rendering all of life's agony and ecstasy. This volume draws on Sanchez's diverse repertoire to showcase the multiplicities of the poet's voice - the profound and personal, the firebrand and socially conscious, the playful and formally dextrous, and the musical - to celebrate her as one of the world's most skilled and versatile poets of the past half century.

Reviews

Praise for Sonia Sanchez * - *
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
Sonia Sanchezs illustrious career spans seven decades. Her commanding oeuvre continues to elevate languages ability to give voice to entire communities (their daily pleasures and pains) inside our shared and troubled history -- Claudia Rankine
Only a poet with an innocent heart can exorcise so much pain with so much beauty -- Isabel Allende
A lion in literature's forest... This world is a better place because of Sonia Sanchez: more livable, more laughable, more manageable. I wish millions of people knew that some of the joy in their lives comes from the fact that Sonia Sanchez is writing poetry -- Maya Angelou
You have spoken for us . . . Written for us . . . Sung to us . . . How much in your debt we are -- Toni Morrison
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, former US Poet Laureate
Sonia Sanchezs poetry is a must for all readers. Period * Essence *
For over 60 years, Sanchez has helped redefine the landscape of American politics and literature one of the greats in American poetry * NPR *

Author Bio

Sonia Sanchez is a poet, playwright, educator, activist, and one of the founders of the Black Arts movement. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Does Your House Have Lions, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Homegirls & Handgrenades, which won an American Book Award. She has also received many other awards including the Robert Creeley Award, the Frost Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in Philadelphia.