Yusef Komunyakaa

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I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head

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In the following positive review of I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Miller calls Komunyakaa 'one of the important poets of his generation.' The collection extends and deepens the terrain Yusef Komunyakaa explored so effectively in his first collection of poems, Copacetic. Komunyakaa is a poet of the night and of the streets, and in this collection his narrator roams through the dark alleys and side streets of the American landscape—a world populated by hustlers, prostitutes, angels, and ghosts—witnessing and participating in the world he records. Ordinary experience is often transformed into allegory and everyday people appear as mythic figures. Komunyakaa's poems are works of impressive verbal dexterity and striking images and rhythms, and this collection should consolidate his place as one of the important poets of his generation.
SOURCE: A review of I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, in Choice, Vol. 25, No. 1, September, 1987, p. 125.

[In the following positive review of I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Miller calls Komunyakaa "one of the important poets of his generation."]

[I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head extends] and deepens the terrain Yusef Komunyakaa explored so effectively in his first collection of poems, Copacetic. Komunyakaa is a poet of the night and of the streets, and in this collection his narrator roams through the dark alleys and side streets of the American landscape—a world populated by hustlers, prostitutes, angels, and ghosts—witnessing and participating in the world he records. Ordinary experience is often transformed into allegory and everyday people appear as mythic figures: The Thorn Merchant, Mr. Magnifico, The Thorn Merchant's Wife. And the "I" that records these poems is also the eye that perceives them, seeking in the process to restore the vital connection between the heart and the brain, the mind and the senses. Komunyakaa's poems are works of impressive verbal dexterity and striking images and rhythms, and this collection should consolidate his place as one of the important poets of his generation.

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