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WordChords: A Memoir in Poems

by Len Fraser; Cover Design or Artwork by Marie M. Placide

198 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #06-3183; ISBN 1-4251-1424-5; US$17.50, C$17.50, EUR11.95, £9.04

"Poignant images and metaphors resonate through this work, reminding us of where we've been and the pinnacles yet to attain."- Herb Boyd, author of We Shall Overcome

About the Book

A book of sonnets, sestinas, haikiu free verse, blues, jazz, hip hop poems describing the author's life spanning over 75 years. The author travels as an African American male in some of the momentous times of the 20th and 21st century. Len Fraser's perspective as a husband, grandfather, teacher, civil rights activist, and playwright is viewd through the prism of his literary skills.

About the Author

Leonard Kemi Fraser is a retired Clara Barton High School teacher. As a political activist he was a member of the Garvey Organization UNIA/Garvey Centennial Committee. For nearly forty years he has been a poet and writer. His poems and articles have been published in Nommo, Black Scholar, Garvey's Voice, Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, and African American Classical Music/Jazz Spotlight News.

Mr. Fraser Studied poetry with Quincy Troupe and poet ABBA at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, and is also a former member of Jayne Cortez's poetry workshop. For the past ten years he's bee a member of Martin Simmon's prose and poetry workshop. Mr. Fraser is also a member of the New World Writers Collective. He lives in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn, New York.

He is currently writing the autobiography of multitalented percussionist Ben Riley with Donna Simmons, the wife of his late great writing teacher, Martin Simmons, and writer/journalist Ken Jones.

Excerpts

Reviews

"In WordChords Len Fraser celebrates the spirit of the African American community, creating poems dedicated to family, friends, poets, musicians, and sports figures, poems from baseball to hurricanes, from urban life to rural situations, from human contradictions to political comments, from religious thought to ground zero space, from haiku to other literary forms. Len Fraser has seasoned the events of his experience with his own poetic sauce. This is a tasty, energetic memoir in poems."

Jayne Cortez, Poet

"America's best Black poets have always had their hands on the people's pulse, consistently evoking a pantheon of cultural and political giants. The poetry of Len Fraser is at once indicative of this mission, and it also rings with wit and humor. Poignant images and metaphors resonate throughout this work, reminding us of where we*ve been and the pinnacles yet to attain."

Herb Boyd, author of We Shall Overcome

"Lenny Fraser has captured the essence of African Folks in America... Lenny has captured the spiritual/historical side of the music in which Africans in America have created, nurtured and performed. It is a masterpiece. He cuts through America's lies, with his WordChords that infuses such a pride into the minds of the righteous to stand up and say 'up you mighty race' you can accomplish what you will. A must book for all Pan African people and people who know the truth."

Arnold Boyd, Founder & Executive Director of The TraneStop Resource Institute, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"WordChords: This is a wide road of words, poems, that Len Fraser has summoned us to walk. A road strewn with Blues and Jazz; life and death. A road of precise history, herstory, that surrounds us‹until we become his family and rest in his embrace."

Sonia Sanchez, Poet