Yusef Komunyakaa

In an interview in the journal Callaloo, Yusef Komunyakaa, author of seven collections of poems, expresses his admiration for poets whom he considers to have achieved a in their poetry, an achievement he apparently strives for in his own work. A closely associated, if not identical, goal and a source of tension in Komunyakaa's poetry is his desire to gain admittance into the American literary canon, but not at the expense of surrendering his African American cultural identity. At the core of Komunyakaa's pursuit of a unified vision and literary canonization is his stern resistance, textualized formalistically as well as thematically in his poems, to those forces in the hegemonous counterculture aimed at excluding him as an African American from the ranks of humanity. Indeed, in the singularity of his perseverance and in both the high quality and quantity of his poetic output, Komunyakaa approaches the intensity of no less a figure than prototypical canonization quester Ralph Ellison in his bid for mainstream American literary status. Komunyakaa, however, lacks the irritability Ellison sometimes displays in his attitude toward other African American writers, in particular the young black writers of the culturally insurrectionary 1970s. unified vision Komunyakaa seeks involves the integration and aesthetic instillation in his poetry of cultural material from both his African American and his European American sources. A useful sampling of Komunyakaa's artistry at work - including his quest for a unified vision, his bid for literary canonization, and his push for the completion of his humanity - can be found in two poems from his ironically titled fourth collection, for the Eyes in Head (1986): When in Rome - Apologia, the last two lines of which supply the title of the book, and I Apologize. will also refer briefly to The Music That Hurts. A particularly illustrative passage appears in I Apologize, a dramatic monologue that intertextualizes Robert Browning's prototypical dramatic monologue My Last Duchess: I'm just like the rest of the world: / No comment; no way, Jose (37). After staking his claim for unqualified status in the human race and issuing his somewhat tongue-in-cheek declaration of no comment (ironically noting the extent to which further comment might implicate him in the negatives as well as the positives of the humanity he holds in common with his white auditor), the persona comments anyway, Addressing the person designated as sir, who occupies the position of the implicit, silent auditor of the traditional dramatic monologue, the persona observes that he want[s] spring always / dancing with the pepper trees, etc. (37). Like most of Komunyakaa's poems, I Apologize is markedly obscure. On first reading, the persona might be the typical, racially or ethnically unspecifiecl, Peeping Tom, but we soon realize that he is the archetypal reckless eyeballer, the fated African American male in the U.S. South of not too many years ago who is accused of looking, too long, and by implication with sexual intent, at some white woman, a tabooistic infrigement for which he is likely to be lynched. accused's only defense, his only recourse in such a predicament, is a desperate and futile excuse. is typified in the poem's opening lines, which also encapsulate the kind of redemptive humor black people engage in among themselves: My mind wasn't even there. / Mirage, sir. didn't see / what thought saw. / ... was miles away, saw nothing! (37). Then there is the sheer desperation of the poem's concluding line and a half - This morning / can't even remember who am (37) - an apparent plea of insanity. When in Rome - Apologia aptly intertextualizes Browning's monologue as well. Both of Komunyakaa's poems allude to the fate of the wife of Browning's jealous persona, the Duke who had his spouse killed for smiling excessively at other men

Art · Humanity · Theology · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Race, History, and American Society

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