Sonia Sanchez Inspires Many 

at Heart’s Day 2002

by Jamie Walker

Washington, D.C.---If you weren’t able to participate in her Creative Writing—Poetry class last semester then you missed out on the opportunity to have an internationally acclaimed, award-winning, deeply passionate, and incredibly down-to-earth poet and human being teach you the politics of life; the sweet spirit of resistance; the importance of beginning poets to know form; and the beauty of the spoken and the written word.

Similarly, if you happened not to be present at the Heart’s Day Tribute (given by the Department of English at Howard University) appropriately titled “Sonia Sanchez and the Academy” this Valentines Day in honor of the exquisite, prolific poet with the “hurricane tongue” who has published over a dozen books of poetry (including We A BaddDDD People, Shake Loose My Skin, and A Blues Book for a Blue Black Magical Woman), then you missed history and herstory in the making. You missed the insightful, “critical,” supportive panel of speakers who convened together in the Forum at the Blackburn Center from 9—5pm, celebrating “Sistah Sanchez’s” legendary achievements; her evolution as a poet, “visionary” leadership; dramatic role in the Black Arts Movement; and her participation in the Black Studies Movement at San Francisco State University, which helped to spawn a whole slew of other Black Studies departments across the nation.

However, these weren’t the only events that you missed at Heart’s Day 2002. You also missed being personally touched by the spirit of Sanchez’s “incite-full” words as she performed her poetry live later that evening with none other than Sweet Honey and the Rock (Sacred Ground 1995), the all female group—clad in long-flowing, beautiful, red dresses—most known for their rich, soul-stirring, “still-water” deep, collective accapella voices used as a means to incite change; to negotiate peace; to encourage others to re-member their distant, sacred past; and to occasionally perform a “social critique” of contemporary issues affecting African-Americans throughout the Diaspora.

The Heart’s Day Tribute is an annual celebration in which the department “commemorates its intellectual traditions” in hopes of securing funding for the Sterling A. Brown Endowed Chair. It was first inspired by Dr. Victoria Arana who, on Feb. 14, 1991, invited Professor Joyce Ann Joyce to speak at what was then considered a “love lecture,” a conference that as Dr. Arana notes “featured some way that African-American writers treated the topic of love.” Heart’s Day hasn’t changed much over the years, only grown significantly, and the writers selected to participate in the conference are all still addressing the universal theme of love. 

This year, Heart’s Day was actually opened with Dr. Barbara Griffin moderating a panel entitled “The Poet as a Creator of Social Values.” The panel featured Melissa Flicek from the College of St. Catherine; Dr. Frenzella E. De Lancey (founding editor of BMa: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review) from Drexel University; and Dr. Lorenzo Thomas from the University of Houston who presented his paper entitled, “Memories of Slavery/Survival: Sonia Sanchez, Afrocentricism, and the Modernist Long Poem.”

“Blues Book is an apocalyptic text revealing that which is hidden,” said Dr. Thomas, explaining that Blues Book reflects some of the very same concepts found in määt (e.g. right order, right truth, and etc).

“Does Your House Have Lions? (Beacon 1997) is also another long, epic poem much like Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is also written in rhyme royal (a.k.a. rime royale), and has four different voices,” continued Dr. Thomas, after stating that Blues Book carries allusions to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. With his insightful observations, Dr. Thomas proved that Sonia, much like many other legendary black writers who have been marginalized by colonizing Others since the beginning of time (simply because they were black), Sonia should also be included in the English literary canon.

Dr. Jennifer Jordan moderated the second panel entitled “Orality, Performance, and Voice,” which featured Deonne Minto from the University of Maryland; Dr. Joanne Gabbin from James Madison University; and a passionate Deborah Grison from Jackson State University.

“Sonia’s poetry is sensuous, soulful, and urgent,” said Dr. Gabbin, but not before first revealing that the cute, shiny, silver earrings dangling from her lovely brown ears were a gift from Sanchez herself. This, of course, coupled with Gabbin’s vibrant personality (and praise) for Sonia caused the audience to continue to smile and look on her fondly.

A thirty-minute video-documentary entitled “Dr. Sonia Sanchez: The Wisdom of a Poet” was shown before Dr. Jon Woodson gave his keynote address and Dr. Eleanor W. Traylor, chair of the English department, shared with students and scholars her illustrious, memorable presentation entitled “The Full Moon of Sonia Shinin’ Down on Ya’.” In the presentation, Dr. Traylor made several references to Sonia, the “blue black magical woman” who has “walked a long time,” overcame a fierce battle with stuttering, negotiated a public space for herself (in the academy, during the Black Arts Movement, her short stay with the Nation of Islam, and throughout the turbulent 1960’s), and in due and Divine time eventually made a “pilgrimage to herself” by refusing to do two things: 1) to entertain a victim mentality and 2) to succumb to the “unconscious” belief that just because she is black and female does not mean that she must be restricted simply because of her gender, race, or class. Like the progressive young character in Aaron McGruder’s comic-strip The Boondocks (featured daily in The Washington Post) who, as Dr. Traylor noted, “journeys” under the guidance of his dear grandfather, Sonia Sanchez also speaks truth to power and people, determined to “root out the social and political evils in this world” while, at the same time, helping to maintain racial, sexual, and social justice here on Earth.

However, as Dr. Gabbin was ever careful to remind us about Sonia in her presentation, “love remains her ultimate concern.”

At the “dear request of Sanchez,” some of the younger poets who participated in workshops with Sonia at Cave Canem shared their rhythmic, gripping poems, including: Carlo Paul, Brandon Johnson, John Frazier, Robin Dunn, Joel Diaz-Poerter, Monica Head, Jane Alberdson, Ernesto Mercer, and Holly Bass.

The final panel, moderated by Dr. Greg Hampton, included Dr. John Bracey from the University of Massachusetts; Dr. Joyce A. Joyce, the very first “Heart’s Day” speaker and author of Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African Poetic Tradition (Third World Press 1996); and Dr. Thomas Battle from the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

Perhaps what is so interesting about what took place during these panel sessions is that while all of the conference participants continued to share their musings, “critical,” scholarly research and findings with the audience, the prolific poet whom everyone seemed to be praising was also sitting quite comfortably (by herself) in the back row of the Forum, listening attentively with her quiet, patient ear; nodding her head in deep gratitude and approval (whenever she was enlightened or touched); and occasionally cheering with excitement (and jubilation) for of all the conference participants who came to show their support and love. For example, after one participant recalled how Sonia “used the classroom as a public forum to engage others in honest exchange between black women and men,” and also how Sonia wrote love poems during the Black Arts Movement “at a time when Baraka said let there be no more love poems,” a calm, resonant voice arose from the back of the room and announced:

“I wrote the love poems on purpose.”

After the audience turned around in their seats to see whose incredibly melodic voice was coming in soft, swift waves and even “soprano” tones over their able shoulders, they recognized that it was her: Sonia and her wise, humble self, standing up to add truth to fire, passion to age-old wisdom and wit.

“I wrote the love poems on purpose,” Sonia said, “because I knew—how were we going to know how to love ourselves when all of that was over? Every time I see us moving away, I always call us back with my poetry and say ‘come back.’”

Speaking from behind a podium after one of the panels, Professor Jemmie from Howard University admitted, “After hearing her perform her poetry, Sonia Sanchez leaves you mentally and psychologically exhausted.”

And he is right. Sonia’s poetry covers many different issues and themes, including but not limited to: rape; incest; the distant, sacred, re-membered past; lost childhoods; reverence for the Ancestors (literary, historical, “herstorical,” or otherwise); racism; sexism; homophobia; institutionalization; globalization; resistance and re-creation; black male-female relationships; sex and sexuality; infidelity; losing loved ones (especially her brother) to A.I.D.S.; and black women continually making a pilgrimage to her own self and soul. Sonia’s poetry always heightens the consciousness of her readers and listeners. Whenever she is reading, speaking, or teaching, she, like Maria W. Stewart (a disciple of David Walker, black woman abolitionist, and prophetess of the nineteenth century) always encourages Others who might be victims of what W.E.B. DuBois calls “double-consciousness” to awake and catch her fire.

As Tony Medina, co-editor of a collection of poetry and essays called Catch the Fire: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry (titled after Sonia’s poem initially written for Bill Cosby) once said in an interview with one of the participants on the panel, “Sonia’s poetry never gets old. It keeps getting younger and younger. Her poems maintain the fire that we are fueled by.”

It was fitting, then, for Sonia to be honored at Heart’s Day 2002 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., especially considering her extensive “legacy of leadership for a global America” and her profound interest (like Langston Hughes) in younger poets and writers. I can safely say, then, that all who were in attendance at this exquisite ceremony and distinguished gala dinner (in honor of the “tall poet,” personal friend, and mentor) that because Sonia naturally is and naturally continues to share her rhythmic, soulful incantations with the world, we, the displaced Africans—sons and daughters of “Ethiop” strategically scattered throughout the Diaspora—naturally are and will always continue to be. 

                      Copyright 2002. Jamie Walker. All Rights Reserved.