Abstract
This article examines the recurring formal traits, themes, and political concerns motivating Wanda Coleman’s 100-poem American Sonnets sequence. I argue that through her transformations of the sonnet form and her attention to current social issues, Coleman helps to define a new movement in experimental black poetics. Her work responds directly to poetic predecessors and contemporary writers while amassing a wide range of compositional strategies that both acknowledge her roots in the Black Arts Movement and mark out new creative ground.
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