Yusef Komunyakaa
Biographic Data
| ID | 958877 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yusef Komunyakaa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yusef |
| FAMILY NAME | Komunyakaa |
| SIGNATURE | KOMUNYAKAA Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ministry of Education |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 123 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 123 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Komunyakaa, Collaboration, and the Wishbone: An Interview
Trauma Mantras: A Memoir in Prose Poems
Thirteen Poems
Other| April 01 2019 Thirteen Poems Wisława Szymborska; Wisława Szymborska Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Jee Leong Koh; Jee Leong Koh Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Yusef Komunyakaa; Yusef Komunyakaa Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Samuel Menashe; Samuel Menashe Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Gunter Eich; Gunter Eich Search for other wo…
Weather Wars
Condition Red: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries
Condition Red collects writing by one of America's most gifted and revered poets, Yusef Komunyakaa. While themes from his earlier prose collection, Blue Notes, run through Condition Red, this volume expresses a greater sense of urgency about the human condition and the role of the artist. Condition Red includes his powerful letter to Poetry magazine, asserting that "we writers (artists) cannot forget that we are responsible for what we conjure an…
After the Heart's Interrogation; From Across Years; Butterfly-Toed Shoes; Modern Medea and: Basilique
378 African American Review 50.4 (Winter 2017): 378-381© 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press and Saint Louis University Komunyakaa_Komunyakaa 2/13/2018 2:14 PM Page 378 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA 379 Komunyakaa_Komunyakaa 2/13/2018 2:14 PM Page 379 380 AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW Komunyakaa_Komunyakaa 2/13/2018 2:14 PM Page 380 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA 381 Komunyakaa_Komunyakaa 2/13/2018 2:14 PM Page 381
From the Last Bohemian of Avenue A
from THE LAST BOHEMIAN OF AVENUE A Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Now, these days I sometimes feel& think of the death-watch beetle& night sweat, can see my friendJoe Top dying on the third floor,& our landlord from hell. I could tastethe burn of dread in the rented airmid-July, & could hear the fly-humof a broken voice up there pleadingto himself, & that other gruffcounterpoint, saying, Joe, signyour Hancock on this dotted linegets you two grand in cold…
Haze
Haze Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Characters (in their twenties): The Inquisitor Ralph, Master of Rules Morgan, Master of Arms Simon Jindal, a Pledge Antonio Chen, a Pledge Eugene Maceo, a Pledge The Tattooed Oracle / A Dancer Setting Time and Place: Now. Near a quarry in a college town. The lights come up slowly on Antonio Chen and Eugene Maceo locked in pillory stocks, facing the audience, their heads covered with black hoods. Birds chirp. A wheelbar…
The Deacons
The Deacons Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Characters Frank Junior: A former member of The Deacons for Defense, in his mid-sixties. He’s a high school biology teacher, contemplating retirement. Troy Lewis: A former member of The Deacons for Defense, a year older than Frank Junior. He has recently retired from the US Postal Service, and he is now visiting his hometown after being away for thirty-odd years. Annie Mae: Troy Lewis’s daughter, visiting her fa…
Dear Mr. Bill
Dear Mr. Bill Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) When you left Church Hill at 82 where you were born & raised & came to Montgomery, took a job in a shoe factory & slept nights in the back room of a funeral home, was it hard for your fingers to learn to stud leather, & did the syncopation of a latching machine settle into you ‘til rain fell through your bones, ‘til you stopped & set up a studio on a crate near a blacksmith shop & began drawing reveries on scr…
The Procession
The Procession Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Yes, the dust of the Great Migration is in our dreams & on the soles of our feet, but we can foxtrot into this bandaged season limping toward us from the fog. Each question uncurls a little whip in the air. Can we change tomorrow? Can we love what’s in the deep mirror & trace fault lines beneath nocturnal streets? Loneliness & anger always know the road home. Now the long-lost ones stand at the threshold & ga…
Requiem
Excursions: A Conversation with Yusef Komunyakaa
"Excursions" A Conversation with Yusef Komunyakaa Kyle G. Dargan This conversation took place August 24, 2005 during the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Ripton, VT. Back in the days when I was a teenager Before I had status and before I had a pager You could find the Abstract listening to hip-hop My pops used to say it reminded him of be-bop I said, "Well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles" The way that Bobby Brown is just amping like …
A Finer Form
In 1996, the George Moses Horton Society for the Study of African American Poetry was founded at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with the purpose ofpromoting the creation and scholarly evaluation of African American poetry. After conferences in Chapel Hill in 1998, 2000, and 2002, the Society met jointly with the second Furious Flower Poetry Conference held at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in September of 20…
New Blues
New Blues Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) We are hurting We are dying For a new blues One that doesn't rhyme With worn-out shoes We are hurting We are dying For a neo blues More than an inverted pyramid Something to push against To get to the evidence Inside us Forget the applause machine Forget the corporate lotto Forget he alchemist's gold scheme And you can ditto The sphinx's motto We are hurting We are dying For a nouveau blues To underline What's lef…
Anodyn
Anodýn Yusef Komunyakaa Translated by Josef Jařab Miluji to, jak rostedo chrámu, kde jeuvězněn, kde sídlí bůhhanby. Milujisvahy & vrcholy, tajemnéstezky, které si nechávám pro sebe.Miluji své zkroucené nohypokřivené marnivostí & pracovníobuví, která měla přežítvěky. Mužnost přitahovaná k mléku,které sama nevytvoří. Miluji rty,sůl & voštinku na jazyku.Vlasy, které se nepoddají dešti& sněžení. Bílé měsíčkysvých nehtů. Miluji to,jak všechno zvekrev …
Nighttime Begins with a Line by Pablo Neruda
White Lady
White Lady Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Something to kill songs & burn the guts, to ride & break the hippocampus. Something to subdue the green freedom of crows at Slaughterhouse Creek. Milk mixed with gin or metho— something to finish the job guns & smallpox blankets didn't do, to prod women & seduce gods to dance among trees, letting silver bark uncurl into an undressed season. Something to undermine those who refuse to dangle brass breastplates from…
Anodyne
Anodyne Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) I love how it swells into a temple where it is held prisoner, where the god of blame resides. I love slopes & peaks, the secret paths that make me selfish. I love my crooked feet shaped by vanity & work shoes made to outlast belief. The hardness coupling milk it can't fashion. I love the lips, salt & honeycomb on the tongue. The hair holding off rain & snow. The white moons on my fingernails. I love how everything b…
"Seven Deadly Sins" (2 fragments)
"SEVEN DEADLY SINS" (2 fragments) Yusef Komunyakaa Translated by Michal Tabaczynski 1. Lenistwo Kiedy jesteś jednym z siedmiuNieszczęść, gdzieś w twoim królestwie gąszczuLiści morw, znajdą się tacy, którzy stwierdząŻe szkoda na ciebie kuli, bo twoja Skóra nie nada się nawet na porządnyPortfel. Jakby cię cofnąć do lenistwa wódPłodowych & spętać w słodkiejOspałości - nim wreszcie otworzyłeś oczy Sto innych gatunków zdążyło wymrzeć.Urodziłeś się w n…
Blue Dementia
Tu y yo estamos desapareciendo
"Tú y yo estamos desapareciendo" Björn Hakansson and Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Translated by Valerie Mejer (bio) El grito que bajo de las colinas es el de una joven que se sigue quemando en mi cabeza. Al amanecer > ella se quema como un pedazo de papel. Se quema como un hongo en un valle en forma de muslo. Una falda de llamas baila alrededor de ella en el crepúsculo. Nos paramos con nuestras manos colgadas a los lados, mientras ella se quema como un…
A Grown Woman's Love
A Grown Woman's Love Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) There's no recipe Saying how much sugar To stir into this Cornucopia of desire No ungodly premonitions Beamed up from Atlantis No life-and-death message From Bacchus or Galatea No dark-haired mermaids No lighthouse in a storm No sirens on the rocks I'm going out And shout it to the top Of my voice Fill the air With what I feel I don't care This isn't some little girl's Double dare Or flouncy dream come …
My Father's Love Letters
Ignis Fatuus
Ignis Fatuus Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) Something or someone. A feeling among a swish of reeds. A swampy glow haloes the Spanish moss, & there's a swaying at the edge like a child's memory of abuse growing flesh, living on what a screech owl recalls. Nothing but a presence that fills up the mind, a replenished body singing its way into doubletalk. In the city, Will o'the Whisp floats out of Miles' trumpet, leaning ghosts against nighttime's backdrop …
You and I Are Disappearing
"You and I are Disappearing" Björn Hakansson and Yusef Komunyakaa (bio) The cry I bring down from the hills belongs to a girl still burning inside my head. At daybreak she burns like a piece of paper. She burns like foxfire in a thigh-shaped valley. A skirt of flames dances around her at dusk. We stand with our hands hanging at our sides, while she burns like a sack of dry ice. She burns like oil on water. She burns like a cattail torch dipped in…
Killer Imagination
Poetry
Blasphemy
The Leper's Bell
The Heart's Graveyard Shift
Eleemosynary
For the Walking Dead
Black Silence, Black Songs
Untitled Blues (After a Photo by Yevgeny Yevtushenko)
Boy Wearing a Dead Man's Clothes
Nothing Big
Crescent City Blues
Communique
Two Cranial Murals
Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of twelve books of poems, including Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000); Thieves of Paradise (1998), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 (1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Dien Cai Dau (1988), which won The Dark Room Poetry Prize; I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), winner of the San F…
Lightshow
Red Pagoda
The One-Legged Stool
Between Days
Boxing Day: Burns never landed a blow. It was hopeless, preposterous, heroic
Report From The Lucky Country
Oaths & Debts
In the Mirror
The Edge
Rollcall
The Rebel
The Breaking
Art (75 works) · History (52 works) · Art history (46 works) · Literature (42 works) · Poetry (33 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · African history and culture analysis (20 works) · Psychology (15 works) · History (14 works) · Geology (11 works)