New Releases by Phillip Shabazz

Moonflower draws upon a symbol between the journey of the speaker and the contemporary American experience, reflecting on the external and internal conflict between nihilism, hope, and redemption.

"This is a spectacular body of work...I don't use the word spectacular often. It wrenched me inside out and reassembled me whole. Shabazz naps with one eye open where suffering and courage encapsulate lifetimes of experience. Be careful, his poems shamelessly offer grenades in lunch boxes posed as gifts." -Jaki Shelton Green, 2009 Piedmont Laureate, and winner of the North Carolina Award for Literature "One word, AMAZING. A powerful, moving collection from a poet at the height of his powers... From passionate lyrics to meditative narratives, Shabazz's poems are peopled with unforgettable characters, real human beings, friends, family, revolutionaries and lost wild men lurking city streets for something more than a handful of change. This book is not a confessional rather a meditation on a life lived and confirms that to be the Phoenix one must first endure the fire, only then can one rise from the ashes." -Howard L. Craft, poet, playwright "In a world ruled by indifference in which the glimmer of past embers appear barely visible, Shabazz's words remind us that if we train our eyes to listen, it is obvious for all to see that from Ganazumba to Hotada Francis, from the rage of loss to the reinvention of the soul, from the end of a world to the building of that other world of collective love found in the sweetness of mother's cooking, Black Fire lives on " -Alvaro Reyes, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

"Told through the eyes of a young boy, When the Grass was Blue poetically protrays the trials and hardships of growing up in the South during the Civil rights era of the 1960s."--Page 4 of cover

Poetry. African American Studies. XYZOOM is an inspired, cosmic collection of poetic space, written with heart, song, rhythm, blues, and flashes of light. Shabazz draws from a deep connection with African American language, history, and tradition in this collection of rhythmic lyric and prose poetry. Phillip Shabazz is the author of Freestyle and Visitation: Poems. His poetry readings and workshops are presented in colleges, schools, writers camps, prisons, and cultural and community centers. He is currently executive director of SpiritHouse, a grassroots, community service organization in the Triangle area of North Carolina.