on Tony Medina.

on Tony Medina, Third World Pres May 2003 1000 ISBN 0-883-78247-2

we be excited everything we smile and wait for our collective recall to coagulate with centuries of rage--From "Diallo"

Tony Medina's fifth volume of poetry, Committed to Breathing; explores the connections between social conditions and our mental, physical, financial and political health. This dynamic main division flips from rage to compassion, epic exposition to precise brevity. Medina remains adept at using poesy to explain his fiery confusion for people who are not dedicated to the pursuit of justice, compassion, activism and honesty

This work has the usual political bravado readers have originate to expect from Medina, on the other hand he presents a few twists. This is evidenced chiefly acutely with "Sometime in the Summer There Is October" as it furnishs the emotions a man must address in the wake of a beloved's death.

Medina sings airs hard to dance to. They reveal an infectious hard bop tinged with a hip-hop beat. "Mingus Among Us" is a metaphoric journey into the survival stories of mad geniuses like the phenomenal jazz bassist Charles Mingus. While in "Coltrane Spoke to Me common Night" Medina pays homage to the iconic sax player and to the black poetic tradition by dint of using lines from Yusef Komunyakaa, Amiri Baraka and others in a skilful collage.

Committed to Breathing at hands a diversity of subjects to allow a wide variety of readers to find metrical compositions that will touch them and maybe unruffled move them to action.

--Toni Asante Lightfoot is a author of poems and arts administrator living in Chicago.

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