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    This Is Not a Small Voice

    Selected Poems

    Author Sonia Sanchez
    Look inside
    Paperback
    $19.00 US
    Beacon Press
    5.02"W x 7.74"H x 0.42"D   | 5 oz | 24 per carton
    On sale Mar 03, 2026 | 160 Pages | 9780807024492
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    "A lion in literature’s forest"—Maya Angelou
    A dazzling selection of poems from one of the most beloved American poets, whose distinctive verse resonates around the globe

    Few poets in history have possessed the irrepressible humanity and abundant positivity that characterize Sonia Sanchez’s astonishing body of work.

    Energetic, infectious and rich with sonic exuberance, Sanchez’s poems have radically transformed the direction of American poetry over the past six decades and have been an inspiration to readers around the world, including Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe. Whether it’s her iconic haiku, rhythmic ballads or devastating elegies, Sanchez’s luminous verse thrums with a profound generosity and an international consciousness, rendering all of life’s agony and ecstasy.

    This volume draws on Sanchez’s diverse repertoire to showcase the multiplicities of the poet’s voice—the profound and personal, the firebrand and socially conscious, the playful and formally dexterous, and the musical—to celebrate her as one of the world’s most skilled and versatile poets of the past half century.
    Sonia Sanchez is an award-winning poet, activist, scholar, and formerly the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University, and is currently a poet-in-residence there. She is the author of sixteen books, including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Shake Loose My Skin, and Morning Haiku. View titles by Sonia Sanchez
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    Under a Soprano Sky
    Fragment 1
    Fragment 2
    This Is Not a Small Voice
    Story
    Sequences
    City Songs
    Poem Written After Reading Wright’s ‘American Hunger’
    At the Gallery of La Casa de Las Americas, Habana. Dec. 1984
    A Poem for Ella Fitzgerald
    Poem No. 10
    Ballad
    Poem No. 7
    Fall
    Philadelphia: Spring, 1985
    When we come
    From a Black Feminist Conference Reflections on Margaret Walker: Poet
    to CHucK
    a ballad for stirling street (to be sung)
    personal letter no. 3
    a poem for my father
    insomnia
    A Poem for Paul
    Past
    Why / Poem No. 1
    July
    Father and Daughter (I)
    poem at thirty
    Depression
    (section 1)
    Does Your House Have Lions?
    On Seeing a Pacifist Burn
    malcolm
    An Anthem
    in the courtroom
    MIAS
    A Love Song for Spelman
    Father and Daughter (II)
    haikuography
    Haiku / After the fifth day
    Haiku / Haiku
    10 haiku
    15 haiku
    9 haiku
    6 haiku
    Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman
    personal letter no. 2

    Acknowledgments
    “You have spoken for us . . . Written for us . . . Sung to us . . . How much in your debt we are.”
    —Toni Morrison

    “The poetry of Sonia Sanchez is full of power. . . . It makes you wish you had thought those thoughts, felt those emotions, and, above all, expressed them so effortlessly.”
    —Chinua Achebe

    “Her commanding oeuvre continues to elevate language’s ability to give voice to entire communities (their daily pleasures and pains) inside our shared and troubled history.”
    —Claudia Rankine

    “Her songs of destruction and loss scrape the heart; her praise songs thunder and revitalize. We need these songs for our journey together into the next century.”
    —Joy Harjo

    About

    "A lion in literature’s forest"—Maya Angelou
    A dazzling selection of poems from one of the most beloved American poets, whose distinctive verse resonates around the globe

    Few poets in history have possessed the irrepressible humanity and abundant positivity that characterize Sonia Sanchez’s astonishing body of work.

    Energetic, infectious and rich with sonic exuberance, Sanchez’s poems have radically transformed the direction of American poetry over the past six decades and have been an inspiration to readers around the world, including Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe. Whether it’s her iconic haiku, rhythmic ballads or devastating elegies, Sanchez’s luminous verse thrums with a profound generosity and an international consciousness, rendering all of life’s agony and ecstasy.

    This volume draws on Sanchez’s diverse repertoire to showcase the multiplicities of the poet’s voice—the profound and personal, the firebrand and socially conscious, the playful and formally dexterous, and the musical—to celebrate her as one of the world’s most skilled and versatile poets of the past half century.

    Creators

    Sonia Sanchez is an award-winning poet, activist, scholar, and formerly the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University, and is currently a poet-in-residence there. She is the author of sixteen books, including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Shake Loose My Skin, and Morning Haiku. View titles by Sonia Sanchez

    Table of Contents

    Under a Soprano Sky
    Fragment 1
    Fragment 2
    This Is Not a Small Voice
    Story
    Sequences
    City Songs
    Poem Written After Reading Wright’s ‘American Hunger’
    At the Gallery of La Casa de Las Americas, Habana. Dec. 1984
    A Poem for Ella Fitzgerald
    Poem No. 10
    Ballad
    Poem No. 7
    Fall
    Philadelphia: Spring, 1985
    When we come
    From a Black Feminist Conference Reflections on Margaret Walker: Poet
    to CHucK
    a ballad for stirling street (to be sung)
    personal letter no. 3
    a poem for my father
    insomnia
    A Poem for Paul
    Past
    Why / Poem No. 1
    July
    Father and Daughter (I)
    poem at thirty
    Depression
    (section 1)
    Does Your House Have Lions?
    On Seeing a Pacifist Burn
    malcolm
    An Anthem
    in the courtroom
    MIAS
    A Love Song for Spelman
    Father and Daughter (II)
    haikuography
    Haiku / After the fifth day
    Haiku / Haiku
    10 haiku
    15 haiku
    9 haiku
    6 haiku
    Haiku and Tanka for Harriet Tubman
    personal letter no. 2

    Acknowledgments

    Praise

    “You have spoken for us . . . Written for us . . . Sung to us . . . How much in your debt we are.”
    —Toni Morrison

    “The poetry of Sonia Sanchez is full of power. . . . It makes you wish you had thought those thoughts, felt those emotions, and, above all, expressed them so effortlessly.”
    —Chinua Achebe

    “Her commanding oeuvre continues to elevate language’s ability to give voice to entire communities (their daily pleasures and pains) inside our shared and troubled history.”
    —Claudia Rankine

    “Her songs of destruction and loss scrape the heart; her praise songs thunder and revitalize. We need these songs for our journey together into the next century.”
    —Joy Harjo

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