Generations: Selected Poetry, 1969-1985

by Sonia Sanchez

65 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Sonia Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama. After her mother died in childbirth a year later, Sanchez lived with her paternal grandmother and other relatives for several years. In 1943, she moved to Harlem with her sister to live with their father and his third wife.

She earned a B.A. in political science from Hunter College in 1955. She also did postgraduate work at New York University and studied poetry with Louise Bogan. Sanchez formed a writers' workshop in Greenwich Village, attended by such poets as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), and Larry Neal. Along with Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight, she formed the "Broadside Quartet" of young poets, introduced and promoted by Dudley Randall.

Reviews

[Hollis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sad to have to return this borrowed copy and will now have to get some fuller Sonia Sanchez collection to keep on my shelf. This is phenomenal stuff. I don't necessarily agree with the gendered approach Sanchez gives to nature, it's a little, idk, hokey. But even still, Sanchez has one of my favorite controls over voice - the way her poems sound when read aloud. There's a a powerful sense of magic and tethers the soul to history and land when you read her stuff aloud. I feel like it gives me life. "Reflection After the June 12th March for Disarmament" is my favorite, probably the most gripping political poetry I've come across yet. Her style is curiously direct, you want to speed through, but should slow down, because the beauty is in the details - that goes for all good poetry, but Sanchez does an especially strong job of making her stuff orally strong whilst textually distinct. To me, poets are usually stronger in one or the other.