Wild Beauty is a compilation of poetry from one of America’s most iconic poets, Ntozake Shange. These poems span decades of her work, from her first choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf through to previously unpublished poems that deal with modern events like The Pulse Nightclub Shooting. Shange’s themes of beauty, home, pain, empowerment, joy, and the African Diaspora are all present throughout the book.
Wild Beauty is one of my first attempts at reading a collection of poetry, and I’m glad that I was able to read this book in conjunction with The Stacks Book Club with author, poet and performance artist, Gabrielle Civil. We talk about the anxieties around reading poetry and what makes a poem “good” and what it means to “get it”. All of which I found truly helpful in my own journey into reading poetry.
My biggest take away from our conversation and this book, is that I like poems that are referential to events and people. I like to know the context of the poem. I respond to poems that tell stories and engage with history and the world as I have seen it. Those poems exist in this book, poems like “Crack Annie”, “Dressing Our Wounds in Warm Clothes”, and “Ode to Orlando” all stuck with me because I was able to find common experience and understanding with Shange.
I didn’t like every poem in this book. Many were hard to get through or engage with. Sometimes that was because the phonetic spelling Shange uses through out her work, was distracting at times, though at other times it was powerful. (I should also note each poem in this collection was translated into Spanish as well). Sometimes I couldn’t figure out where Shange was coming from. I’ve learned, that that is totally ok. I’ve learned that just because a poem doesn’t work for me in the moment doesn’t mean it won’t work for me in a year. I also learned, that just because I don’t like a poem doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me or the poem. We’re just in two different places.
I don’t know that I can recommend any book of poetry to anyone. It seems to me to be very personal. Though, I do know I recommend you check out my conversation with Gabrielle, as it is useful to anyone who loves poetry, or anyone who is hoping to add poetry to their reading life.
Hear Gabrielle Civil on The Stacks and then hear Gabrielle discussing poetry and Wild Beauty for The Stacks Book Club
- Hardcover: 288
- Publisher: 37 Ink; Bilingual edition (November 14, 2017)
- 3/5 stars
- Buy Wild Beauty Amazon or IndieBound
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