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Microphone Check
Microphone Check is Gerald L. Coleman at his best. A defiant homily on privilege, race, and the social contract - his poems are neither timid nor retiring. With his finger on the pulse of the issues that grip our times, this Affrilachian Poet screams in blistering appeal to our human nature for justice. This is not the collection for readers seeking odes on flowers and misty summer mornings by the lake. It is poetry for revolutionaries.
- GenresPoetry
74 pages, Paperback
Published June 11, 2017
120 people want to read
About the author
Gerald L. Coleman
22 books48 followersGerald L. Coleman is a philosopher, theologian, poet, and Science Fiction & Fantasy author. He was born in Lexington and now makes his home in the Atlanta area. He did his undergraduate work in philosophy, english, and religious studies, followed by a master's degree in Theology. He is the author of the Epic Fantasy novel series, The Three Gifts, which currently includes When Night Falls (Book One), A Plague of Shadows (Book Two), and the upcoming When Chaos Reigns(Book Three). His poetry has appeared in: Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, Drawn To Marvel: Poems From The Comic Books, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel Vol. 18, Black Bone Anthology, the 10th Anniversary Issue of Diode Poetry Journal, About Place Journal, and Star*line Vol. 43, Issue 4. His speculative fiction short stories have appeared in: The Cyberfunk Anthology: The City, the Roaring Lion Anthology: Rococoa, the Urban Fantasy Anthology: Terminus and Terminus 2, the 2019 JordanCon Anthology: You Want Stories?, Dark Universe: Bright Empire, Cyberfunk! by MVMedia, the JordanCon 2022 Anthology: Neither Endings Nor Beginnings, and Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird. His essays appear in the polish language Con-Magazine: KONwersacje, Apex Magazine 127, and the Hugo nominated Fanzine: Journey Planet. He has been a Guest Author at DragonCon, Boskone, Blacktasticon, JordanCon, Atlanta Science Fiction & Fantasy Expo, SOBSFCon, The Outer Dark Symposium, World Horror Con, Imaginarium, and Multiverse. He is a Scholastic National Writing Juror, a Co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, an SFWA member, a Rhysling Award Nominee, a recipient of The Hero of the Horn Award at JordanCon, and a Fellow at the Black Earth Institute. He is currently working on new editions of When Night Falls, A Plague of Shadows, and writing book three in epic fantasy series - entitled, When Chaos Reigns. You can find him at Geraldcoleman.com.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 18, 2017
I'm very proud of this collection. Here are some reviews by authors:
In Microphone Check, Gerald L. Coleman checks more than his sound. He checks my privilege, my conscience, my pulse. Coleman is akin to an Old Testament prophet, righteous and fed up, screaming out from the South one last warning to our country: for our sins of sanctioned murder, colonization, and terrorism against our citizens: now is the time to repent.
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Author of Render/An Apocalypse and American Purgatory
Wry, prescient, and uncompromising, Coleman's poetry flows like a portentous crack of thunder rolling over the mountains and low hills of our complacent literary landscape.
John Edward Lawson
Author of Wholesome Terror: Lawfully Combative Verse
Gerald Coleman's Microphone Check moves between fierceness and revelry. Here, America is called to task ("your flag waves/ with the crisp snap/ of a coffin cover") and freedom is a hollow path, paved with memory. On the shoulders of poets of the Black Arts Movement, Coleman reclaims blue grass and Southern haints, Affrilachia and telltale history. In this riotous collection, the poet is truthseeker, stardust and alien, an outsider in this America, insistent on meting out love and measuring value by skin. A son playing with fire, in Microphone Check, Coleman is elegiac and ablaze with "blackness/ ...too bright/ to gaze directly into."
Remica Bingham-Risher
Author of Starlight & Error
The microphone check, in hip-hop laymen terms, presents a call to attention, an alarm to heed a message about to be dropped in the heat of battle, or a battle about to begin, a spool of informed and historical knowledge woven through sound and language to a crescendo, releasing an epiphany, which for a moment, instigates silence, and then the proverbial, Oh, no he didn't! After reading Microphone Check, by Gerald L. Coleman, the reader will say Oh, yeah he did! Coleman unapologetically indicts America, his place of birth, through lyrical landscapes of history, events, circumstances and prejudices, through an aesthetics steeped in the Black Radical Tradition. Exquisitely crafted and razor sharp, these poems penetrate truth, removes silence (because it will not save you), indicts racism, calls out the post-racial wannabees, while keeping it real and 100.
Randall Horton
Author of Pitch Dark Anarchy & Hook: A Memoir
In Microphone Check, Gerald L. Coleman checks more than his sound. He checks my privilege, my conscience, my pulse. Coleman is akin to an Old Testament prophet, righteous and fed up, screaming out from the South one last warning to our country: for our sins of sanctioned murder, colonization, and terrorism against our citizens: now is the time to repent.
Rebecca Gayle Howell
Author of Render/An Apocalypse and American Purgatory
Wry, prescient, and uncompromising, Coleman's poetry flows like a portentous crack of thunder rolling over the mountains and low hills of our complacent literary landscape.
John Edward Lawson
Author of Wholesome Terror: Lawfully Combative Verse
Gerald Coleman's Microphone Check moves between fierceness and revelry. Here, America is called to task ("your flag waves/ with the crisp snap/ of a coffin cover") and freedom is a hollow path, paved with memory. On the shoulders of poets of the Black Arts Movement, Coleman reclaims blue grass and Southern haints, Affrilachia and telltale history. In this riotous collection, the poet is truthseeker, stardust and alien, an outsider in this America, insistent on meting out love and measuring value by skin. A son playing with fire, in Microphone Check, Coleman is elegiac and ablaze with "blackness/ ...too bright/ to gaze directly into."
Remica Bingham-Risher
Author of Starlight & Error
The microphone check, in hip-hop laymen terms, presents a call to attention, an alarm to heed a message about to be dropped in the heat of battle, or a battle about to begin, a spool of informed and historical knowledge woven through sound and language to a crescendo, releasing an epiphany, which for a moment, instigates silence, and then the proverbial, Oh, no he didn't! After reading Microphone Check, by Gerald L. Coleman, the reader will say Oh, yeah he did! Coleman unapologetically indicts America, his place of birth, through lyrical landscapes of history, events, circumstances and prejudices, through an aesthetics steeped in the Black Radical Tradition. Exquisitely crafted and razor sharp, these poems penetrate truth, removes silence (because it will not save you), indicts racism, calls out the post-racial wannabees, while keeping it real and 100.
Randall Horton
Author of Pitch Dark Anarchy & Hook: A Memoir
Displaying 1 of 1 review