[Below, Parisi offers a mixed assessment of Copacetic.]

Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, but bred all over the place, Komunyakaa once edited a magazine called Gumbo. His own verse is rather a spicy concoction, too, mixing the scents, sights, and sounds of "cottonmouth country" with the patois of the bayous and the blues joints of Bourbon Street. Sometimes this heady brew [in Copacetic] conjures up authentic images of those southern climes and eccentricities, especially in several vignettes of jazz stars (among them Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus) and lesser known New Orleans "characters." When the poet's transcripts drift further from these deeply felt, personal experiences, the results are less satisfying. Perhaps it's the sophistication of his further education (especially those advanced arts degrees) that puts the somewhat off-putting "processed" and professionally jived up tone into others of these verses. Still, in the bluesy lyrics and elegies, there's a good deal of the steamy high spirits, as well as the sadness, of real life.