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Books by Yusef Komunyakaa
I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head
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Dien Cai Dau
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Magic City /
Neon Vernacular
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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
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Books by Reetika Vazirani
White Elephants /
World Hotel
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India-born
poetess, son found dead in Washington
India-born poet Reetika Vazirani and her two-year-old son were
found dead with their wrists slashed at their house in a posh
section of the US capital.
Vazirani, who used verse to describe her experience as a
child and as an Indian immigrant was staying with her son Jahan
for the summer in the the Chevy Chase home of her friend and
novelist Howard Norman and poet Jane Shore, who are spending
the summer at their home in Vermont.
Police have found a note from the scene with
references to the boy's father, Pulitzer prize winning poet and
Princeton University professor Yusef
Komunyakaa.
Police called the deaths an apparent murder-suicide, pending an
official ruling, The
Washington Post reported quoting sources.
Neighbors and friends told reporters that there had been
signs that Vazirani was distraught.
The day before the incident, the poetess had a meeting with a
neighborhood catholic priest and borrowed a Bible from
a neighbor.
Komunyakaa could not be reached and
relatives in the area refused to comment.
Vazirani's first book White Elephants fetched her a Barnard New Women Poet
Prize in 1996 and her second book World Hotel won the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf-Book
Award.
Percival D'Silva, a priest at the Shrine of the Most Blessed
Sacrament, whom Vazirani met a day before her death, said,
"She was distraught."
A friend said Vazirani had spoken to her about
personal problems, some involving her relationship with Professor
Komunyakaa.
But Denise King-Miller said Vazirani had come to
dinner on Monday and seemed upbeat. "Her conversation with me
was really about how she was going to move forward."
Before 8 a.m. (local time) on Wednesday,
King-Miller said, Vazirani left her a voice mail saying, "I
think I'm going to hurt myself."
King-Miller said she got the message later and
began calling Vazirani every hour but got no answer.
Also that day, a police source told the Post,
Vazirani left a voice mail for another friend saying, "I'm
having a kind of emergency now, and I wanted to make sure you
could let yourself in."
The friend visited the house before 4.30 p.m. and
found the bodies lying parallel to one another on the floor with
two large kitchen knives nearby.
Mother and son appeared to have been dead for
hours, one source familiar with the scene told the paper.
Shore said on Wednesday by phone that her family
was still in Vermont and knew little about what had happened in
their Washington home. "We feel just horrible."
Vazirani's editor described her as a warm,
intelligent person whose poems explored the two worlds that
immigrants inhabit.
"She's truly an international, lyrical poet,
an accomplished lyrical story-teller," said Sam Hamill, whose
Copper Canyon Press published Vazirani's second book.
"She wrote about being in both cultures and
between both cultures."
"Vazirani definitely was one of the writers
to watch," said E. Ethelbert Miller, King-Miller's husband
and director of the African American Resource Center at Howard
University.
"She was really representing the new Indian
voice, in dealing with the issue of finding one's place, or home
after immigration."
Vazirani was a writer-in-residence last year at
the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
Later this year, she and Komunyakaa
were to join the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta.
"This is a terrible loss for all of us at
Emory, as well as the world of poetry," said Jim Grimsley,
director of the university's creative writing program.
Source: Washington Post, July 18,
2003 18:01 IST |