Wanda Coleman @ Harriet

Anyone who has read her widely-admired collection of essays The Riot Inside Me knows that Wanda Coleman is a woman who does not mince her words. Today at The Poetry Foundation blog, Harriet, the eminent Los Angeles poet, author, and essayist grieves for the state of American poetry. She writes, 'The chilling, if not complete silencing, of contemporary American poetry at peak bloom is an awful thing to watch. Educational factors are too numerous to mention; however, the insistence by the mainstream that poetry sell, the death of independent bookstores, book reviews, and the overall throes of a publishing world that must revamp or die, is brutally ugly.'

Enjoy!