Poets Sonia Sanchez and Haki Madhubuti, veterans of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, as well as friends, delivered charged works to a rapt audience over the weekend on Chicago’s West Side.
Sanchez, a Temple University English professor, previewed work from two as-yet-untitled books at the opening of the Black Light Fellowship Center and Bookstore, 128 S. Paulina St.
She recounted a harrowing tale of a mother who trades her 7-year-old daughter for drugs: “In the old days, black women would do anything to protect their children. But now . . .”
Sanchez punctuated her poetry with prose, but it was far from prosaic. For example, during the same poem, she interjected her opinion about young women who dress in underwear for music videos. Mimicking their movements, she said with a wry smile, “They call it sexy, but in my time, we called it something else.”
Sanchez also selected from three of her 13 books of poetry and fiction, moving from the august halls of academia to the peeled plaster of crack houses with strongly evocative work.
In “A Poem for Sterling Brown” from the book “I’ve Been a Woman” (Third World Press, 1985), she read: “Your words/scratching the earth/where no minstrel songs/run from their thighs.” Sanchez also rendered a scientifically correct yet humorous story about the origin of rain.
Madhubuti, a Chicago State University English professor, drew on down-home wisdom and affable-yet-worldly perspective to render poetic truths.
While his brief reading did not include the new book of essays he edited, “Why L.A. Happened,” or trademarks, such as “Waitin’ ” and “Don’t Cry, Scream” from his 18 books of poetry and essays, his selections were delightful.
“Poet: What Ever Happened to Luther?”-taken from his 1987 volume “Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors” (Third World Press)-demonstrated his metamorphosis from a streetwise hipster to a knowledge-filled elder: “For a young man, he was too serious, never did smile, and the family still don’t know if he had good teeth . . . every child of God knows that when family members act polite, that means they don’t want to be around you.”
“Paris Peace Talks, 1968” was an ingenious scat-spewed suffusing the sounds of speech and warfare.
