Wanda Coleman

Public librarians are grateful to Wanda Coleman for her support ("Borrowed Time," Three on the Town, Aug. 15), but we are also shaking our heads over her possibly revisionist memory. While it was usually true that children could not check out adult materials on a child's library card, neither my colleagues nor I have experienced or even heard of a public library that segregated books into "boys" and "girls" sections. Most American public libraries were outgrowths of the proliferation of women's study groups between the 1870s and 1920s.

Wanda Coleman, widely considered the "unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles," has been battling an upper respiratory infection since September; she has been hospitalized more than once. According to an email from Richard Modiano, director of Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center , Coleman had to cancel several appearances this fall due to illness, and recently went back into the hospital again. She is scheduled to be released early this week but will need additional care after she is discharged.

things wait until funds are insufficient then deconstruct in concert the aura of fear offends management cultivate false confidence. to pretend one does not need is to muzzle resistance in the fractured mirror of public intercourse care for self beneath all distortions wisdom is an old wardrobe kept in good repair hunger is most attractive when gaunt generosity when opulent. practice the craft of lean-staying.

What is the rhythm of Los Angeles? Before hearing poet Wanda Coleman speak at the Los Angeles Central Library recently, it had never occurred to me to think that L.A. has a rhythm. Coleman is an L.A. native whose poems have taken her around the world as an ambassador of Angeleno attitude. She shared the stage at the library's "ALOUD" lecture series with another great L.A. poet, Lewis MacAdams. When you leave L.A. and come back, Coleman told us, you feel the unique way time and people move here.

Cleveland and them hung out in that Watts cafe used to be across the tracks on a diagonal north of the workshop off 103rd. No women were allowed at that table unless being schemed upon, or of exceptional beauty. But I was a stubborn little mud hen at the fringe of the clique, starved for approval. So one day Cleveland and them was sitting at the table. Cleve and maybe Eric and one other brother. I boldly intruded on their exclusivity with my neat little sheaf of poems.

In this extraordinary collection of short stories, Wanda Coleman, a poet who grew up in the Watts area of Los Angeles, turns a baleful eye on lives that "mainstream" America wishes would somehow go away: She chronicles the not-so-quiet desperation of the poor and black urban dweller and gives voice to their unending struggle to keep afloat in a hard-scrabble environment circumscribed by racism and poverty.

When I finished reading the column, I thought, "I wonder if Wanda Coleman knows that she's a racist?" MILLIE DE ROSE San Fernando

By WANDA COLEMAN steam rises over my nose against this night cold empty room as wide as my throat; eases/flows river a mocha memory from aunt ora's kitchen. she made it in the big tin percolator and poured the brew into thick white fist-sized mugs and put lots of sugar and milk in it for me and the other kids who loved it better than chocolate and the neighbor woman used to tell her and us it wasn't good for young colored children to drink.

It is beyond my comprehension that you would publish "Pulling a Fast One" by Wanda Coleman (Guest Bites Town, Aug. 9). She may indeed be a poet, but driving 110 miles an hour on the highway for thrills will soon qualify her for the Dead Poet's Society. Hopefully, it will be a single car accident that does her in, and she will not take any law-abiding citizens with her. RUTH M. NERLICH Glendale

Writer Wanda Coleman has been named to the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University. Coleman, best known for her poetry and stories, is the author of seven books, including "Hand Dance," "African Sleeping Sickness" and "Heavy Daughter Blues." Her university teaching appointment is for two years.

One of my favorite pieces of writing to emerge from the 1992 Los Angeles riots is a poem by a writer named Nicole Sampogna, called "Another L.A. " In it, the poet traces the odd dislocation of living on the Westside while so much of the city burns. "They send us home early, again," she begins, "supposedly for curfew sake, / but I know it's to beat the traffic. " And then: "over there the smoke rises, / horns blare, streets scream, / shoot, loot, / bash windows, bash heads, / lights out / knocked out / by a black & white with a baton.

Starting with her 1977 book, "Art in the Court of the Blue Fag," Coleman has produced a body of work -- poetry, novels, memoir, criticism and journalism -- that has moved more than one observer to dub her "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles." She has been praised both as a black writer and an L.A. writer, but her aspirations and her achievements transcend such labels.

Possibly it wasn't Charles Bukowski's kind of joint, this grand library of marble, wingback chairs and oil paintings, a place with arched ceilings and a marble vestibule that commands a cathedral-like hush. Or maybe it wasn't, that is, until poet Wanda Coleman sashayed up to a podium at a reading to salute Black Sparrow Press, the maverick literary publisher that had been based in California for 36 years.

Like love, literature has the power to provoke both delight and very nasty quarrels. One such fight surrounds this week's cancellation of a reading at Esowon, the independent, black-owned bookstore that is Los Angeles' leading outlet for writing by African Americans. At the controversy's center is Wanda Coleman, the prizewinning poet and fiction writer whose 14 books include "Mercurochrome," a 2001 National Book Award nominee.

Most everyone knows Southern California for its broad, breathtaking vistas, the provocative curve of coastline or its vast grid--the stock-footage flourish of the establishing shot. Getting up close, though, has proved a challenge. Moving out of the cliche of Southern California and into the hidden particulars has always vexed, confused or stymied outsiders, who cling to the common notion that "there is no there there."

Truth-telling brands you: Intolerant or confrontational? Brave and singular? Angry? Part of the problem? Or part of the solution? Or is it all of the above? Wanda Coleman knows. She'll give you some time to think about it . . . but not too much.

I have yet to understand how Joe Camel is "designed to sucker in youngsters, especially black children" ("Say It Ain't Cool, Joe," Three on the Town, by Wanda Coleman, Oct. 18). Having grown up with Camel and Joe Camel ads everywhere, I do not smoke, never have and probably never will. But I do enjoy creative advertising, and Joe Camel ads are some of the best. Yes, he has self-respect, charisma and a look of intelligence--traits parents should be instilling in their children instead of letting them run free and unsupervised.

I am pleased that your reporter was so inspired by the Poetry in Motion program that he developed his own ditty ("MTA Buses Adding Rhyme to the Ride," Oct. 2)! Catchy rhymes should not, however, be confused with the work of professional, published poets appearing aboard every Metro bus, courtesy of the Poetry Society of America and the Getty Research Institute. I have received several calls from bus riders who have unexpectedly discovered--and enjoyed--works by Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Octavio Paz, Wanda Coleman, Marisela Norte, Chungmi Kim and others as they travel across the city.

Re "Reality Bites" (by Jan Breslauer, July 28): Nonfiction drama is exciting when in the hands of a capable novelist, playwright or scriptwriter. While Anna Deavere Smith's acting in "Twilight: Los Angeles 1992" was impressive (except for male characters), her script lacked the qualities of fine playwriting--reality perceived imbued with insights, polished and memorable dialogue shaped from mundane speech, a cohesive theme, a strong sense of place, etc. Instead of transforming L.A.'s civil unrest into an artistic work within the grasp of anyone unfamiliar with our city, Smith reduced her unoriginal material to an ill-formed, sophisticated agitprop that absolved the largest segment of Southern California voters of responsibility for the social neglect that fostered the tensions that erupted following the verdict in the Rodney King beating case.