Black Wings & Blind Angels: Poems

Sapphire became a semi-celebrity for the harsh poems of abuse and recovery in her first book, American Dreams; she then made waves for the huge advance on her novel Push. This second volume of verse finds her less aggressive, mixing her hostilities and anxieties with a newly bemused nostalgia. A long prose piece portrays God as a Samoan woman who greets Sapphire's abusive father in Heaven, explaining that he has been saved because he helped his daughter succeed: ""You're dead Daddy and your girl she works for me, God."" Where an older persona-poem had Sapphire speak with the voice of Tina Turner, a new one has her impersonating Michael Jackson, gloating, ""I buy those old songs of John & Paul / & Ringo & sell 'em for dog food commercials. I am rich."" The poet declares elsewhere ""It is clear/ I was not cut out for bulldyking or prostitution now""; about a lover, she explains, ""I am not four, his penis/ is not my father's. My father is dead, it's my life now."" Among the free-verse persona poems Sapphire even strews a few sestinas. This isn't to say she's gone soft: as in Push, her compulsively consumable stories of trauma explore the far reaches of hell before coming up for air and angels. As if to remind us that she's still dangerous, one of the volume's central images is a so-called Indian wolf trap- a salt lick that hides a razor. These poems won't convert those who dislike Sapphire's work already, and they might alienate her fans; the undecided, however, may find more clarity here than in her earlier work, and thus more means for engagement. (Oct.)