Poetry with NEGATIVE numbers

     In October of 2018, I was reminded of the significant achievements of poet and playwright, Ntozake Shange (1948-2018) as I read her obituary in the Washington Post.  Shange wrote with daring and with vivid imagery -- and often used numbers very effectively, as in this poem, "With No Immediate Cause."  I present its opening lines; the complete poem may be found here at poemhunter.com.

          With No Immediate Cause     by Ntozake Shange

          every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
          every five minutes a
          woman is raped/every ten minutes
          a lil girl is molested   
          yet i rode the subway today
          i sat next to an old man who
          may have beaten his old wife
          3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
          he might have sodomized his
          daughter but i sat there . . ..
               .  .  .

Poet, performance artist, playwright, and novelist Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams on October 18, 1948, in Trenton, New Jersey. She took the name “Ntozake” (“she who comes into her own things”) “Shange” (“she who walks like a lion”) from the Zulu dialect Xhosa.   She is best known as the author of the play, or “choreopoem," for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.