Before all the buzz dies down around the already-laureled film Precious , we thought we'd stay in the glow of the creator of its title character , the poet and educator known as Sapphire. Your editor met her around 2001 as a fellow member of The Writers Room in Greenwich Village, years after we read her incendiary novel PUSH (upon which the film, starring Gabourey Sidibe in the title role, is based). By then her poetry collection American Dreams had been cited by Publisher's Weekly as "One of the strongest debut collections of the nineties," and she had just published Black Wings & Blind Angels , of which a publisher's excerpt is below. Of that book, Poet's & Writer's Magazine wrote: "With her soul on the line in each verse, her latest collection, Black Wings & Blind Angels , retains Sapphire's incendiary power to win hearts and singe minds."

Read Sapphire's poem, Breaking Karma #5, at Women's Voices For Change.

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