Books by Yusef Komunyakaa
I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
/
Dien Cai Dau
/
Magic City /
Neon Vernacular
/
Toys
in a Field
Thieves of Paradise /
Talking Dirty to
the Gods / Pleasure
Dome /
Jazz Poetry Anthology /
The Second Set /
Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy
Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews, and
Commentaries
* *
* * *
Books by Bob Kaufman
Solitudes
Crowded with Loneliness /
The Ancient Rain:
Poems 1956-1978 /
Second April
/
Cranial
Guitar: Selected Poems /
The
Golden Sardine
* *
* * *
|
Letter to Bob Kaufman
By Yusef Komunyakaa
The gold dust of your voice
& twenty-five cents
can buy a cup of coffee.
We sell pain for next to nothing! Nope,
you don't know me but your flesh-
&-blood language lingers in my head
like treason & raw honey.
I read GOLDEN SARDINE
& dance the Calinda
to come to myself.
Needles, booze, high-steppers
with dangerous eyes.
Believe this, brother,
we're dice in a hard time hustle.
No more than handfuls of meat.
C'mon, play the dozens,
you root worker & neo-voodooist,
you earth lover & hole-card peeper.
We know roads dusty with old griefs
& hot kiss joys.
Bloodhounds await ambush.
Something, perhaps the scent
of love, draws them closer. |
* *
* * *
 |
Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa
Edited by
Shirley A. James Hanshaw
Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa
brings together over two decades of
interviews and profiles with one of
America's most prolific and acclaimed
contemporary poets. Yusef Komunyakaa (b.
1947) describes his work alternately as
"word paintings" and as "music," and his
affinity with the visual and aural arts is
amply displayed in these conversations. The
volume also addresses the diversity and
magnitude of Komunyakaa's literary output.
His collaborations with artists in a variety
of genres, including music, dance, drama,
opera, and painting have produced
groundbreaking performance pieces.
Throughout the collection, Komunyakaa's
interest in finding and creating poetry
across the artistic spectrum is made
manifest. |
For his collection
Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems,
1977-1989, Komunyakaa became the first African American
male to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Through his
work he provides keen insight into life's mysteries from
seemingly inconsequential and insignificant life forms
("Ode to the Maggot") to some of the most compelling
historical and life-altering events of our time, such as
the Vietnam War ("Facing It"). Influenced strongly by
jazz, blues, and folklore, as well as the classical
poetic tradition, his poetry comprises a riveting
chronicle of the African American experience.
* * * *
*
"Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa /
Yusef Komunyakaa: Anodyne
Yusef Komunyakaa
Receives Major Poetry Award—New York, 12 September 2011—Yusef
Komunyakaa has been
selected as the recipient of the
2011 Wallace Stevens Award
from the Academy of American Poets. The $100,000 prize
recognizes outstanding and proven mastery About writing,
Yusef Komunyakaa has said: ". . . my work is informed by the
imagination, and that is more than merely autobiographical.
I think it all connects to an image. I rely heavily on an
image. And I suppose if it's autobiographical because it
comes from within one, then everything is autobiographical
in that sense. There are certain things that beckon to each
of us. The whole of the human experience, I'm interested in.
I want to be surprised by everyday things, such as the
maggot or the scorpion, or what have you."—Poets.org
* *
* * *
|
Yusef
Komunyakaa: 2011 National Book Award Finalist,
Poetry
The latest
collection from one of our preeminent poets,
The Chameleon Couch is also one of Yusef
Komunyakaa's most personal to date. Beginning with
“Canticle,” this varied new collection often returns
to the idea of poem as hymn, ethereal and haunting,
as Komunyakaa reveals glimpses of memory, myth, and
violence. With contemplations that spring up along
walks or memories conjured by the rhythms of New
York, Komunyakaa pays tribute more than ever before
to those who came before him.
The book moves
seamlessly across cultural and historical
boundaries, evoking Komunyakaa’s capacity for
cultural excavation, through artifact and place.
The Chameleon Couch
begins in and never fully leaves the present—an
urban modernity framed, brilliantly, in
pastoral-minded verse. The poems seek the cracks
beneath the landscape, whether New York or Ghana or
Poland, finding in each elements of wisdom or
unexpected beauty. The collection is sensually,
beautifully relaxed in rhetoric; in poems like “Cape
Coast Castle,” Komunyakaa reminds us of his gift for
combining the personal with the universal, one
moment addressing a lover, the next moving the focus
outward, until both poet and reader are implicated
in the book's startling world. |
 |
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Weep Not, Child
By
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
This is
a powerful, moving story that details the
effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the
African nationalist revolt against colonial
oppression in Kenya, on the lives of
ordinary men and women, and on one family in
particular. Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau,
stand on a rubbish heap and look into their
futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has
decided that he will attend school, while
Kamau will train to be a carpenter. Together
they will serve their country—the
teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya
and the times are against them. In the
forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against
the white government, and the two brothers
and their family need to decide where their
loyalties lie. For the practical Kamau the
choice is simple, but for Njoroge the
scholar, the dream of progress through
learning is a hard one to give up.—Penguin
|
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update 20 November 2011
|
