Yusef Komunyakaa

Life and career

According to public records, Komunyakaa was born in 1947 and given the name James William Brown. (His former wife said in her memoir that he was born in 1941.) He grew up in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana. As an adult, he reclaimed the name Komunyakaa, said to be his grandfather's African name. He said that his grandfather had reached the United States as a stowaway in a ship from Trinidad.

Brown served in the U.S. Army, serving one tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. According to his former wife, Mandy Sayer, he was discharged on 14 December 1966.

After his service, he attended college at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he was an editor for the campus arts and literature publication, riverrun, to which he also contributed. He began to write poetry in 1973 and took the name Yusef Komunyakaa. He earned his M.A. in Writing from Colorado State University in 1978, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, in 1980. 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.

Komunyakaa taught at Indiana University Bloomington until the fall of 1997, when he became a professor in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University. Yusef Komunyakaa is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

Poetry

Komunyakaa's I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, published in 1986, 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.:

: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. ::— from "Facing It"

Komunyakaa's many other published collections of poetry, include 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).

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. In May 2013 it received a full production by the Constellation Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

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.

Marriage and family

Komunyakaa married Australian novelist Mandy Sayer in 1985. That year, he was hired as an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington. He also held the Ruth Lilly Professorship for two years from 1989 to 1990. He and Sayer were married for ten years.

He later had a relationship with India-born poet Reetika Vazirani with whom he had a child. Vazirani died in a murder-suicide, killing their son Jehan and herself in 2003; he was two years old.

Interviews

Over the years, Komunyakaa has taken part in many interviews on his life and works. In a 2018 interview titled "The Complexity of Being Human," Komunyakaa addresses the careful use of language and influences of some of his works such as "Facing It." He compares his work to that of a painter or carpenter. He states that poetry is vastly different from journalism in that his work is more violent, much like nature.

In his interview "The Singing Underneath," Komunyakaa describes the biblical influences in his work. He recalls reading the Bible in his youth and discovering what he believed to be underlying poetic elements. Komunyakaa also pays his respects to early influences such as Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Phillis Wheatley.

In a 2010 interview by Tufts Observer, Komunyakaa when asked to list the individuals who most influenced him, he names Robert Hayden, Bishop, Pablo Neruda, and Walt Whitman.

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collections

• Lost in the Bone Wheel Factory, Lynx House, 1979,
• Copacetic, Wesleyan University Press, 1984,
• I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Wesleyan University Press, 1986,
• Toys in a Field, Black River Press, 1986
• Dien Cai Dau, Wesleyan University Press, 1988,
• Magic City, Wesleyan University Press, 1992,
• Neon Vernacular, Wesleyan University Press, 1993 Received the Pulitzer Prize.
• Thieves of Paradise, Wesleyan University Press, 1998
• Pleasure Dome, Wesleyan University Press, 2001,
• Talking Dirty to the Gods, Farrar, Straus and Girou], 2001,
• Taboo, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004,
• Gilgamesh, Wesleyan University Press, 2006,
• Warhorses, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008,
• The Chameleon Couch, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, Shortlisted for the 2012 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
• The Emperor of Water Clocks Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015 ;List of poems

;Anthologies

• Ghost Fishing : An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, University of Georgia Press, 2018.

Essays

• Condition Red : Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries, edited by Radiclani Clytus (University of Michigan Press, 2017, ).
• Blue Notes : Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries, edited by Radiclani Clytus (Michigan, 2000, ).

——————— ;Notes

References

References

1. This birth date is according to US Army discharge papers of 14 December 1966 and other evidence as cited by his former wife Mandy Sayer, although passport supposedly says 1947)
2. Sayer, Mandy, ''The Poet's Wife'', Sydney-Melbourne-Auckland-London: Allen & Unwin, 2014, pp. 400–401.
3. is an American poet who 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''''Neon Vernacular'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=1nclTH1WxScC&dq=neon+vernacular&pg=PP1 excerpts.]
4. [http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komunyakaa/facing_it.php Yusef Komunyakaa: Facing It at The Internet Poetry Archive]
5. ''Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=oqD0VooTCloC&q=Yusef+Komunyakaa excerpts.]
6. [http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/komunyakaa/poetry.htm What is poetry] {{Webarchive. link. (2008-07-06, from "Notations in Blue: Interview with Radiclani Clytus", in ''Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews and Commentaries'', ed. Radiclani Clytus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).)
7. (February 15, 2004). "The Failing Light: Why did a rising young poet plunge into despair, taking her own life and the life of her 2-year-old son?". The Washington Post.
8. lkapoet. (May 1, 2018). "The Complexity of Being Human: An Interview with Yusef Komunyakaa".
9. (January 19, 2015). "Interview with Yusef Komunyakaa: The Singing Underneath".
10. "Tufts Observer".