Mercurochrome. (Reviews).

Wanda Coleman. Mercurochrome. Santa Rosa, Black Sparrow, 2001. 270 pp. $30.00 cloth/$17.00 paper.

In How to Read a Poem, Edward Hirsch claims, "The poet wants justice," and few poets want, nay, demand justice so clearly and consistently as Wanda Coleman. Justice, as an answer to American racial and sexual politics, has been the theme of Coleman's ceuvre, with the most accessible of her poems describing the insults and injustices which African Americans face daily. For example, "Low English," "Sears Life," and "Business as Usual" present the tensions between stores, minorities, and the police. In the last of these, Coleman's anger leads to figurative language on a level seldom seen in her poetry:

and how it is my turn
to opt for what i want, and you suddenly
do not see me, even though
i'm black as blazes as tall
as a drink of salt water and wide as two stadiums
even though
i am standing within stabbing distance

In a similar vein, "South Central Los Angeles Deathtrip 1982" is a poem of nine vignettes, each presenting a death caused by some combination of poverty, environmentally induced ill health, and overzealous, trigger-happy police. Coleman attacks the American complacency that allows these actions and accepts them as normal.

The theme of injustice is continued in Coleman's ongoing series of "American Sonnets," which made their first appearance in African Sleeping Sickness (1993). In Mercurochrome, we have #25 and 87-100. A reader new to Coleman should realize that these are nonce sonnets; they dispense with the expected conventions of meter, rhyme, stanza, and emotional or thematic "turn." Ranging up to sixteen lines of varying length, the "American Sonnets" decry America's obsessions with race and materialism. Number 96 is typical of Coleman's experiments with the sonnet form, as it consists of 15 lines in six stanzas: two stanzas of a single line, two stanzas of two lines (but neither is a couplet), a 4-line stanza (which is not a quatrain), and a 5-line stanza. The theme is stated in one of the non-couplets: "inventory begins--swaying bodies converge/ a genuine assessment of the decline of our welfare state." Each sonnet is a rock thrown in anger against the wall of the status quo.

Mercurochrome contains an interesting section of 58 poems called "Retro Rogue Anthology," in which Coleman imitates the work of more than 50 poets, mostly contemporary. Sometimes she seems to be paying homage to the poet, as with "Dream Song 811, after John Berryman." Sometimes she simply borrows the poet's style for her own subject matter, for example, in "Put Some Sex Sonnet, after Tom Clark." At other times she answers or elaborates on one of the poet's poems: "Supermarket Surfer, after Allen Ginsburg." I am not familiar with every poet in this rogues' gallery, but the ones whose work I know are all white or Hispanic. For them, Coleman abandons her typical lack of capitalization and minimalist punctuation, and she does a passable job with rhymes when the imitation demands it, as in "Naked Tarantula, after Anthony Hecht."

Black Sparrow Press gives its poets plenty of space; their books are far longer than are those produced by other presses. In my personal library I have Black Sparrow books by Lyn Lifshin and Charles Bukowski which also are longer than the average poetry book. So my only complaint is less with Coleman than with the editors, who might have improved this collection with some judicious editing, pushing it down under 250 pages, maybe down to 200, still quite long for a volume of poetry. For example, Coleman writes series of poems with the same title, one of which is "Letter to My Older Sister." In an earlier volume, we learn that Georgiana has died. "Letter to My Older Sister (3)" is a tough remembrance of childhood illness and common sisterhood dreams of the future leavened with self-irony: "a blister-free happiness manned by / a valiant conk-haired dreamdaddy." But this is followed by "Letter to My Older Sister (4)," which comes across more like diary notes sliding into sentimentality: "and i want to do / my bes t to honor those, like yourself, I who no longer have the privilege of work." "Letter (4)" would not be missed. "Letter to My Older Sister (5)" returns to the Coleman voice I value, with its evocation of both the difficult and the treasured moments in life: "love I as i live it seems more like Mercurochrome I than anything else / i can conjure up." This poem, which provides her title, contrasts the pretty, red, pleasant-smelling appearance of this medicine with the sting of its application, which she likens to the dredging of memories, source of subjects for her poems.

Wanda Coleman ranges far wider than a single review can indicate. Poems of sex and relationships and parenting and the imagination and work and death infuse this volume with the variety of a delicatessen. My favorites are those which resound on a deeply personal level yet make an immediate connection with the reader, such as "I Will Never Be Ready," which begins,

it will find me unprepared
hair messed up
teeth unbrushed
one shoe on the wrong foot
in dirty underwear
papers scattered from hem to horizon

The poem is a black woman's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," advice to herself to keep on keeping on. We can hope that Wanda Coleman will remain unready for years to come.