Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947-04-29) is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for "Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems" [Neon Vernacular [http://books.google.com/books?id=1nclTH1WxScC&pg=PP1&dq=neon+vernacular&sig=ACfU3U1pwzA-N5uO7nKVfF-BpIrLdDVwKw excerpts] ] , the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, also for Neon Vernacular, and the 2001 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. His subject matter ranges from the African-American experience through rural Southern life before civil rights and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.

Life

Komunyakaa was born James Willie Brown Jr, the oldest of five children and son of a carpenter, in 1947. He later reclaimed the name "Komunyakaa" that his great grandparents, stowaways in a ship from Trinidad, had given up. He grew up in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana before and during the Civil Rights era, and served in the army from 1965 to 1967, doing a tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War; he acted as an information specialist and editor for the military paper, Southern Cross, covering major actions, interviewing fellow soldiers, and publishing articles on Vietnamese history and literature, which earned him a Bronze Star.

He began writing poetry in 1973 and obtained his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 1975, his M.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado State University in 1978, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine in 1980.

He married Australian novelist Mandy Sayer in 1985, and in the same year, became an associate professor at the Indiana University at Bloomington. He also held the Ruth Lily Professorship for two years in 1989-1990. He and Sayer were married for ten years. He taught at Indiana University until the fall of 1997, when he became an English professor at Princeton University.

In the 1990s, Komunyakaa was engaged in a long-term relationship with the poet Reetika Vazirani, living for some years at Trenton New Jersey, where a son, Jahan Vazirani Komunyakaa was born to them in 2001. In 2003, Emory University made an offer for positions for both of them. On 2003-07-16, while she was spending the summer at a friend's home in Chevy Chase, Washington DC, she and their two-year old son were found dead, with their wrists slashed, in an act of apparent suicide. Komunyakaa faced some flak from feminists and others after this, since Reetika had also left a note which contained references to him [cite news
title = India-born poetess, son found dead in Washington
publisher = Washington Post
url = http://www.nathanielturner.com/reetikavazirani.htm
date = 2003-07-18] , and friends talked about the deteriorating condition of their three-year old marriage [cite news
title = Renowned poet kills son then herself with a kitchen knife
author = Nicholas Wapshott
publisher = The Times
url = http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article845068.ece
date = 2003-07-19] .

Yusef Komunyakaa is currently a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

Poetry

By the 1970s Komunyakaa had became one of the most popular and important American writers of his generation. His first two volumes, Dedications and "Other Darkhorses" (1977) and "Lost in the Bonewheel Factory" (1979) were self-published. Komunyakaa first gained wide recognition for the collection "Copacetic" in 1984, which fused jazz rhythms and syncopation with super-hip colloquialism and the unique, arresting poetic imagery which has since become his trademark. It also outlined 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"

His success continued with "I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head," published in 1986, and which won the San Francisco Poetry Prize, though his true breakthrough moment came with the publication of "Dien Cai Dau" (Vietnamese for "This Crazy Head"), published in 1988, and which focused on his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and won the Dark Room Poetry Prize. Included, was the poem "Facing It" which records his experience visiting the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington D.C. and has become perhaps Komunyakaa's signature poem:

: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" [ [http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/facing_it.php Yusef Komunyakaa: Facing It @ The Internet Poetry Archive ] ]

Komunyakaa has written several books since these, including Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part I (2004), Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems, 1975-1999 (2001) [Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems [http://books.google.com/books?id=oqD0VooTCloC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Yusef+Komunyakaa&sig=ACfU3U0hoXUJsg2onG3m8VfwYkHk0vXygA excerpts] ] , 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 dramaturgy 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 greatly influential across a wide swath of currently active American poets. He views his own work as an indirectness, an "insinuation": [ [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/komunyakaa/poetry.htm What is poetry] , from "Notations in Blue: Interview with Radiclani Clytus," in Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews and Commentaries, ed. Radiclani Clytus (Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 2000)] :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.

References

Bibliography

* "Dedications and Other Darkhorses", R.M.C.A.J. Books 1977,
* "Lost in the Bone Wheel Factory", Lynx House 1979, ISBN 0-89924-018-6
* "Copacetic", Wesleyan 1984, ISBN 0-8195-1117-X
* "I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head", Wesleyan 1986, ISBN 0-8195-5144-9
* "Toys in a Field", Black River Press 1986,
* "Dien Cai Dau", Wesleyan 1988, ISBN 0-8195-1164-1
* "Magic City", Wesleyan 1992, ISBN 0-8195-1208-7
* "Neon Vernacular", Wesleyan 1993 ISBN 0-8195-1211-7
* "Thieves of Paradise", Wesleyan 1998 ISBN 0-8195-6422-2
* "Pleasure Dome", Wesleyan 2001, ISBN 0-8195-6425-7
* "Talking Dirty to the Gods", Farrar Straus Giraux 2001, ISBN 0-374-52793-8 ( [http://books.google.com/books?id=ByYJHgAACAAJ] )
* "Taboo", Farrar Straus Giraux 2004, ISBN 0-374-29148-9
* "Gilgamesh", Wesleyan University Press 2006, ISBN 0-8195-6824-4
* [http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/komunyakaa/other/biography.html Biography at ibiblio]
* [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/komunyakaa/poetry.htm Views on Poetry]
* [http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/biography.php Biography]
* [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/22 Poems]