Ella Fitzgerald, “A Poem for Ella Fitzgerald”
The legendary jazz singer is compared to the force of a hurricane, her voice the whisper of a nun conferred with the title “first lady of tongues.” It a loving poem, an homage to talent and an ode to a larger than life personality.
Gwendolyn Brooks, “For Sister Gwen Brooks”
Another poem lavishing praise upon a heroic figure for the poet. Gwendolyn Brooks is a fellow African-American author whose words Sanchez paints as twirling an emerald lariat and a waterfall of dreams.
Harriet Tubman, “Haiki and Tanka for Harriet Tubman”
The escaped slave turned Underground Railroad engineer turned Union spy turned spokeswoman for the suffrage movement is given life in a series of three and five line poetic forms call haiku and tanka. Twenty of the twenty-four stanzas begin with the directive to “Picture” an image while the remaining four call for the reader to “Imagine.”
Sterling Brown, “A Love Poem Written for Sterling Brown”
Sterling Brown is less famous than the three women listed above. He is also not mention by name in the poem about him, unlike the women above. In fact, Sterling Brown is only a character in the poem by virtue of having his name in the title. Inspired by a newspaper article on a mummy, Sanchez penned this love letter in verse promising Brown that she’s going to wrap his love like a mummy so it will preserve for three-thousand years. Brown is a fellow poet, also a folklorist and literary critic.
The Poet’s Father, “A Poem for My Father (96 years old on Feb. 29, 2000)”
Also not mentioned by name in the body of the poem is the father of Sonia Sanchez. This tribute to her beloved father is intertwined with conceptualizing death in the present and fond memories of happy times in the past.
