Shake Loose My Skin

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

Publishers Weekly,Mapping out an education that starts with a "Homecoming"�"I have been a/ way so long/ once after college/ I returned tourist/ style to watch all/ the niggers killing/ themselves"�and arrives at a "Love Poem" that asks, "where are the fathers/ strutting their furlined/ intellect bowing their/ faces in the crotch/ of academia," Sanchez avoids many of the poetic pitfalls that an explicit political agenda can entail. This gathering, including work from six previous collections, highlights Sanchez's range: prose poems investigate disenfranchised lives, from a lover strung out on dope to a hate-crime victim whose home has been spray-painted with the predictably horrifying epithets, while lyrics move down the page in sinewy lines that seem to pluck living speech from air. But it is love, or the lack therof, that is at the heart of the book. Sanchez's language is restless in seeking it out, shuttling back and forth from a gritty black vernacular in "Towhomitmayconcern" ("git yo/ self fattened up man/ you gon be doing battle with me/ ima gonna stake you out") to the jazzy nomenclature of "This Is not a Small Voice" ("This is the voice of La Tanya./ Kadesha. Shaniqua. This/ is the voice of Antoine./ Darryl. Shaquille.") Such polyvocal lyrics celebrate the breadth of black culture, and probe the silences of bigotry. Like June Jordan, Sanchez is at her best when enacting power struggles rather than merely rallying political support in easy battlecries, as some of these poems do. This collection should draw wide attention to the consistency of Sanchez's achievement, and to the success of her formal adaptations, like the recent "Blues Haikus": "am I yo philly/ outpost? man when you sail in/ to my house, you docked." (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved,Publishers Weekly,Publishers Weekly,Mapping out an education that starts with a "Homecoming"�"I have been a/ way so long/ once after college/ I returned tourist/ style to watch all/ the niggers killing/ themselves"�and arrives at a "Love Poem" that asks, "where are the fathers/ strutting their furlined/ intellect bowing their/ faces in the crotch/ of academia," Sanchez avoids many of the poetic pitfalls that an explicit political agenda can entail. This gathering, including work from six previous collections, highlights Sanchez's range: prose poems investigate disenfranchised lives, from a lover strung out on dope to a hate-crime victim whose home has been spray-painted with the predictably horrifying epithets, while lyrics move down the page in sinewy lines that seem to pluck living speech from air. But it is love, or the lack therof, that is at the heart of the book. Sanchez's language is restless in seeking it out, shuttling back and forth from a gritty black vernacular in "Towhomitmayconcern" ("git yo/ self fattened up man/ you gon be doing battle with me/ ima gonna stake you out") to the jazzy nomenclature of "This Is not a Small Voice" ("This is the voice of La Tanya./ Kadesha. Shaniqua. This/ is the voice of Antoine./ Darryl. Shaquille.") Such polyvocal lyrics celebrate the breadth of black culture, and probe the silences of bigotry. Like June Jordan, Sanchez is at her best when enacting power struggles rather than merely rallying political support in easy battlecries, as some of these poems do. This collection should draw wide attention to the consistency of Sanchez's achievement, and to the success of her formal adaptations, like the recent "Blues Haikus": "am I yo philly/ outpost? man when you sail in/ to my house, you docked." (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book format	Paperback
Fiction/nonfiction	Fiction
Genre	Literature & Fiction
Publication date	January, 2000
Pages	168
Reading level	Preschool
Subgenre	American
Series title	No Series Title found
Number in series	1
Edition	Edition Number One
Publisher	Beacon Press
Original languages	English Language
Translator	No Translator info
Translated from	No Translated Form
Language	English Language
Edu focus	Solar System & Astronomy
Educational level	High School
Awards won	No Awards Won in the past
Is collectible	N
Occasion	NO SPECIAL OCCASSION
Character	No Real Character
Character group	No Character Group
Illustrator	No Illustrator Information
Editor	No editor info found
Binding type	Comb
Digital file format	No Digital File Format
Digital reader format	NO DIGITIAL READER FORMAT
Digital audio file format	No Digital Audio Format
Narrator	No Narrator Info Found
Recording time	10 min
Number of discs	1
Retail packaging	Multipack
Assembled product dimensions (l x w x h)	10.00 x 10.00 x 10.00 in
Assembled product weight	10 oz
Sport	No Sport Information
Bisac subject heading	Fiction