Ode for Donny Hathaway

By Wanda Coleman b. 1946 Wanda Coleman

and then there are the one-hit zombies

cursed to an eternity of Monday nights

who runs our music does not make it

controls manufacture and marketing of rhythm

schemes on and fixes the charts. it’s polyphonic

from the dark of the chitlin to solid gold dawn

doublecrossed over

a love come down

after the plunge

sloshing around in limbo

that too sweet gospel splash

Wanda Coleman, “Ode for Donny Hathaway” from Hand Dance. Copyright © 1992 by Wanda Coleman. Reprinted by permission of Wanda Coleman.

Source: Hand Dance (Black Sparrow Press, 1992)

Biography

Poet and writer Wanda Coleman is a blatantly humanist artist who has won much critical acclaim for her unusually prescient and often innovative work but who has struggled to make a living from her craft. In discussing “my life in poetry,” More magazine, April 2005, Camille Paglia said of Coleman: “She’s not as central as she should be. Her language jumps off the page.” With twelve books of collected writings published by the . . .

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