I was planing to write about Dean Spade’s Normal Life, but the book turned out to be somewhat too dense for a single week, so instead I am writing about Sonia Sanchez’s book of love poems: Like the Singing Coming off the Drums and I will plan on getting Normal Life next week.

At first I didn’t know what I was going to write about this book of poems (besides that they are brief, beautiful, unpretentious, and full of passion and soul) but something happened while I was reading them. I found that I loved the poems so much that I wanted to share them. All day, as I was reading this book, when I encountered a friend, I’d pass the book to them and ask them to read a few poems. What I discovered was that the things that surprise my friends in poetry are different than the things that surprise me; the things that they don’t expect are the things I take for granted.

For instance: I take for granted poetry’s intimate connection with hip hop. But when I showed the dedication to Tupac Amaru Shakur to a friend, her instinctive reaction was “Is that a different Tupac?” It was a connection she was not able to take for granted, or even anticipate.

A great deal of the poetry I read is about sex–I practically expect it in most poems by now. Yet, when I shared this haiku–which I find passionate and evocative–with a couple friends, they were surprised and amused by its candidness:

Blues Haiku

when we say good-bye
i want yo tongue inside my
mouth dancing hello.

One of them asked, “Are they all this sexual?” and I could think of no response but, “Um. Some much more so.” I have long inhabited a world of poetry that includes, along with Sonia Sanchez, poets like Lucille Clifton. (This poem is not from this book, but included in this blog post for comparison.):

To A Dark Moses

You are the one
I am lit for.
Come with your rod
that twists
and is a serpent.
I am the bush.
I am burning
I am not consumed.

– Lucille Clifton

And so, having explored this world of poetry for a long time, candid sex in poetry is not unusual to me. Yet it surprises my friends.

Or I take for granted that the lines between music and poetry are fuzzy, but when I showed a friend this particularly lyrical poem, her reaction was “How is this different from a song?” (To her credit, she was probably intending the question to prompt a conversation about music and poetry.)

Blues

for Deb

even though you came in december be my january man,
i say, even though you came in december be my january man,
but you know i’ll take you any month i can

woke up this morning, waiting for you to call
say, i woke up this morning waiting for you to call
started shaking in my bed, thought i was taking another fall.

fortune teller, fortune teller, what you forecast for me today,
fortune teller, fortune teller, what you forecast for me today,
cuz i ain’t got no time to be messing with yo yesterday.

even though you came in december be my january man,
i say, even though you came in december be my january man,
but you know i’ll take you any month i can
but you know i’ll take you any month i can.

To me the answer is that it doesn’t matter whether it is a poem or a song. Probably–by most reasonable definitions–it could be considered both. It’s my feeling that of course poetry and music have significant overlap. But no matter how you categorize it, it is beautiful. And what I love so much about this poem is that you can hear it sung, even as you read it.

So perhaps this is what makes this book so special–even within her adherence to traditional poetic forms (numerous haikus and tankas) Sanchez’s poems break boundaries. Within formal structures, she presents a casual bluesy tone, full sexuality, music, and feeling.

Blues Haiku

let me be yo wil
derness let me be yo wind
blowing you all day.

I find these brief poems addicting. Even the ones which she does not mark as bluesy are beautiful, modest, and heartbreaking:

Haiku

i have caught fire from
your mouth now you want me to
swallow the ocean.

Haiku

it was nothing big
just no one to put suntan
lotion on my back.

Tanka

i thought about you
the pain of not having
you cruising my bones.
no morning saliva smiles this
frantic fugue about no you.

Looking back on these poems, I suppose they are surprising, in their own way. She concludes the book with some longer poems written for famous figures including Ella Fitzgerald, Tupac Shakur, and Cornel West–each of which is also lovely.

The whole book is unpretentious, surprising, emotional and–most importantly to me–beautiful.