Yusef Komunyakaa

Start Free Trial

Yusef Komunyakaa Criticism

Yusef Komunyakaa is a highly influential American poet known for his evocative work that interweaves themes of cultural identity, personal history, and war, particularly the Vietnam War, into a compelling poetic form. His poetry is celebrated for its vivid, jazz-inspired rhythm and its ability to integrate African American and Euro-American cultural elements. Komunyakaa's acclaimed collection, Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994, highlighting a career marked by profound engagement with issues of violence, racism, and personal resilience. The interplay of pessimism and hope in his work, as noted by Toi Derricotte, provides universal insights into the human condition.

Contents

  • Principal Works
  • Komunyakaa, Yusef (Vol. 94)
    • Copacetic
    • A review of Copacetic
    • 'Lines of Tempered Steel': An Interview with Yusef Komunyakaa
    • I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
    • I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
    • Facing Up to the Deadly Ordinary
    • Rare Instances of Reconciliation
    • Dien Cai Dau
    • The Poetry of Truth
    • Depending on the Light: Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau
    • Lost City
    • Yusef Komunyakaa: The Unified Vision—Canonization and Humanity
    • Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
    • The Tension between Memory and Forgetting in the Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa
  • Komunyakaa, Yusef (Vol. 86)
    • Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
    • What the Center Holds
    • Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
    • A Poet's Values: It's the Words over the Man
  • Komunyakaa, Yusef
    • ‘Depending on the Light’: Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau
    • Jazz and Poetry: A Conversation
    • Yusef Komunyakaa: The Unified Vision—Canonization and Humanity
    • The Truth of the Matter
    • Staying Human
    • On Yusef Komunyakaa
    • Like an Unknown Voice Rising Out of Flesh
    • Vietnam and the ‘Voice Within’: Public and Private History in Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau
    • Yusef Komunyakaa
    • ‘Flashbacks through the Heart’: Yusef Komunyakaa and the Poetry of Self-Assertion
    • Blue Note in a Lyrical Landscape
    • Verse Averse
  • Further Reading