Some Angels Wear Black: Selected Poems

By Eli Coppola

Book Overview

Narrative poems with straightforward, feisty sensibilities confront the difficulties and rewards of love: what one goes through to love and be loved. Social injustice ("Jury Duty") and mortality ("Casual Hands, Brutal Stars, Past Things") are recurrent themes, but love is always the driving force. Often funny, with a subtle sting, Coppola's heartfelt writing reveals an unrelenting, courageous struggle with a progressive disabling disease ("Enlightenment and Muscular Dystrophy").

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916397718
• ISBN13: 9780916397715
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Manic D Press
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

This Is Darn Good Poetry

It's been a long time since I sat down with a book of poetry and read it straight through instead of getting distracted by coffee or novels or running around outside. I did that with Some Angels Wear Black, though--read it straight through, from "flying" to "make of me many miracles." That's 160 pages of poetry, and I enjoyed every one. I think that's because Eli Coppola writes about the things that all of us break our heads over: love, sex, death, god. And the way she writes, with a sort of hard-line lucid ecstasy, makes me wish I could have tromped around San Francisco with her, listening to her describe stuff. There is no schmaltz here, just hard-won sentiment, gritty passionate romanticism, the sort of thing that will make you smile and cry a little at the same time. I had a moment with Some Angels at the kitchen table, sitting there crying in the sun coming through the window, when suddenly a perfect tiny jewel of a hummingbird zeroed in on a flower right in front of my face and hovered. That's what this whole book is like, those moments of crazy simple beauty. Get this book and read it, really.