Morning Haiku Page 3
Sarah Vaughan was an African American jazz singer. These haiku were written while listening to a recording of Vaughan singing “Send in the Clowns.”[back]
Freedom’s Sisters is a multimedia, interactive exhibition that brings to life twenty African American women who fought for the equality of people of color.[back]
Kathleen Cleaver was active in the Black Panther Party and is a senior lecturer in law at Emory University.[back]
Charlayne Hunter-Gault was the first African American student to integrate the University of Georgia. She is a prominent journalist.[back]
Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to Congress, the first major-party African American candidate for president of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.[back]
Betty Shabazz was a civil rights activist, a professor, and the wife of Malcolm X.[back]
Fannie Lou Hamer was the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a voting-rights activist, and a civil rights leader.[back]
Barbara Jordan was an African American congresswoman from 1973 to 1979.[back]
Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress called the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”[back]
Myrlie Evers-Williams was the first full-time chairperson of the NAACP and is the widow of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers.[back]
Dr. Dorothy Irene Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957 to 1997 and is a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.[back]
St. Augustine was a philosopher and theologian born in North Africa of Berber descent who wrote The Confessions, often considered the first Western autobiography. These haiku were written after having spent a week sleeping in St. Augustine’s room at a monastery.[back]
Maya Angelou is an award-winning African American poet, memoirist, and best-selling author.[back]
La mujer de los ojos means “woman of eyes.”[back]
A cante jondo is a deep song.[back]
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2010 by Sonia Sanchez
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
The following were previously published: “14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till),” Southern Quarterly 45, no. 4 (Summer 2008); “21 haiku (for Odetta),” Harvard Review 36 (Spring 2009); “1 year after 9/11,” Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer Magazine, September 8, 2002; “10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals),” in More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell, Jane Golden, Robin Rice, Natalie Pompilio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).
14 13 12 11 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Text design and composition by M. F. Rutherglen at Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanchez, Sonia.
Morning haiku / Sonia Sanchez.
p. cm.
E-ISBN 978-0-8070-6911-0
ISBN 978-0-8070-0131-8 (paperback : alk. paper)
1. Haiku, American. 2. African Americans—Poetry. I. Title.
PS3569.A468M67 2010
811’.54—dc22
2009027670
Table of Contents
cover
title page
dedication
opening epigraph
contents
preface
10 haiku (for Max Roach)
duende
dance haiku
14 haiku (for Emmett Louis Till)
10 haiku (for Philadelphia Murals)
4 haiku (for Nubia)
21 haiku (for Odetta)
3 haiku (for Richard Long, for Tanabata festival, and for Luisa Moreno)
4 haiku (for Eugene Redmond)
7 haiku (for Ray Brown)
6 haiku (for Beauford Delaney)
4 haiku (for Max Roach)
sister haiku (for Pat)
15 haiku (for Toni Morrison)
5 haiku (for Brother Damu)
6 haiku (for Elizabeth Catlett in Cuernavaca)
5 haiku
2 haiku (for Ras Baraka)
6 haiku (for Oprah Winfrey)
5 haiku (for Sarah Vaughan)
2 haiku
5 love haiku
7 haiku (for St. Augustine)
6 haiku (for Maya Angelou)
haiku woman (La mujer de los ojos)
memory haiku
haiku poem-1 year after 9-11
explanatory notes
copyright