This collection of my work would not have been possible without the help of my family and my very close friends. In 2004, I had a stroke and forgot how to read, how to use my mouth, and how to use my hands. It took years of physical rehabilitation and speech therapy along with the care of my daughter Savannah and my dear friend Claude Sloan. As I recovered I was able to write some poems for children’s books and a poem for Pedro Pietri. Then, several years later, in 2011, July 29 at approximately 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon, I had my first episode of severe neuropathy, where I lost control of all my limbs and my extremities. I was wheelchair bound and unable to feed myself or walk. I had to use a trapeze bar to sit up. I couldn’t hold a book or pay attention to people talking to me because my body was constantly trembling and demanding my attention. I could not write. Dragon 13, the speech-recognition computer program that allows you to dictate and have the words transcribed, did not work for me because the visceral feel of paper and pen or keys and fingers was inescapable.
There were no poems for six years.
One night a poem roamed around my head. I couldn’t sleep or watch television. I tried to write it but the pencil hurt my fingers and my hands slipped off the iPad. The only thing left was the computer. But my fingers had not been strong enough to press the keys. I tried anyway. And a poem came out. This was my miracle.
And so, this collection exists, aided by the careful ear of my agent Rob McQuilkin and Lexi Wangler. Many thanks are due to my manager and friend, Donald Sutton of Global Artists Management, whose wisdom, persistence, and acute aesthetic taste has added order and vigor to my creative life. The new poems were all written within the last eighteen months. And the older ones, over the last thirty years. It is wonderful to see my work catch up to itself.
This would not have been possible without the friendship and support of Mickey Davidson, Flemmie Kittrell, Evette Lewis, Craig Harris and George Sams. I owe a great deal to my darling mother, Eloise Owens Williams, who cared for me after my stroke, and tended to me after my surgeries until she died. Without her I would not have made it. Above all, the belief in me of my sisters, Bisa Williams and Ifa Bayeza, and my brother, Paul T. Williams Jr., truly sustained me.
My aesthetic compatriots Thulani Davis, Miguel Algarín, Jessica Hagedorn, Dyane Harvey and Diane McIntyre, David Murray, Wopo Holup, Hammiett Bluiett, Felipe Flores, Woodie King, Luciana Polmey, Renée Charlow, and Michael Denneny kept my imagination alive and vivid. I want to thank Barnard College for salvaging the artifacts of my manuscripts and life. I want to thank President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their lovely note during the depths of my illness. I also thank all my doctors and therapists who have pushed me beyond my own perceived limitations. Finally, the love of my daughter, Savannah Shange, and my daughter-in-law, her partner Kenshata Watkins, and my new granddaughter, Harriet, have made my life worth living. To see this work come to life is astonishing and gratifying beyond my dreams. I am grateful to my professional organizations, the Dramatists Guild of America and P.E.N.
Lastly, I would like to thank my new editor, Dawn Davis, and her assistant, Lindsay Newton, for their care and assistance with this manuscript. It has been marvelous working with them. The delicacy and vivid imagery lent to my work by the poet and translator Alejandro Álvarez Nieves, Ph.D., and the poet Mariposa Fernández, for her assistance in translation and copyediting, is astonishing and gratifying beyond my dreams. With them, I truly believe, as in my “lizard poem,” “i crossed the border / right under yr eyes.”
I want to thank all of my readers and my audiences for leaving me such fabulous and rich memories for all of my creative life.
NTOZAKE SHANGE
Somewhere in the diaspora