Poetry
His collection Copacetic fuses jazz rhythms and syncopation with hip colloquialism and the unique, arresting poetic imagery which has since become his trademark. It also outlines an abiding desire in his work to articulate cultural truths that remain unspoken in daily discourse, in the hope that they will bring a sort of redemption:
"How can love heal/ the mouth shut this way.../ Say something that resuscitates/ us, behind the masks."
He wrote I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, published in 1986, which won the San Francisco Poetry Prize. More attention came with the publication of Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for "crazy in the head"), published in 1988, which focused on his experiences in Vietnam and won the Dark Room Poetry Prize. Included was the poem "Facing It," in which the speaker of the poems visits the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington D.C. Section from "Facing It":
- He's lost his right arm
- inside the stone. In the black mirror
- a woman's trying to erase names
- No, she's brushing a boy's hair."
- - poem "Facing It"
Komunyakaa has published many other collections of poetry, including Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part I (2004), 'Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems, 1975-1999 (2001), Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000), Thieves of Paradise (1998), Neon Vernacular (1994), and Magic City (1992).
After receiving his M.F.A., Komunyakaa began teaching poetry in the New Orleans public school system and creative writing at the University of New Orleans.
In 2004, Komunyakaa began a collaboration with dramaturge and theater producer Chad Gracia on a dramatic adaptation of The Epic of Gilgamesh. The play was published in October 2006 by Wesleyan University Press. In spring 2008, New York's 92nd Street Y staged a one-night performance by director Robert Scanlon.
Komunyakaa's work has been influential for a wide swath of current American poets. He views his own work as an indirectness, an "insinuation":
- Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It’s a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault.
Read more about this topic: Yusef Komunyakaa
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Firm in our beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)