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YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA is a professor in the creative writing department at New York University. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and many other awards for poetic achievement, including the 2001 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the 2004 Shelley Memorial Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
"What is most gratifying about Komunyakaa's [poems] . . . is their
power to convince us that the individual imagination is more than
equal to the most excruciating historical burden."--New Yorker
"In this first collection since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Neon
Vernacular: New & Selected Poems (1994), Komunyakaa brings his
lush, propulsive, myth-making language to a wide range of subjects:
Charlie Parker and Ishi; the California Indian; the wildlife of
Australia and South Africa.... Here, as in the work of kindred
spirits the Beats, a deliberately raw poetry is fruitfully thrown
in with the cooked. The resulting vision of paradise -- 'the same
feeling that drives/ sap through mango leaves, / up into the
fruit's sweet/ flesh & stony pit' -- is a compelling
one."--Publishers Weekly
"Komunyakaa's heroic attempt to reconcile so many different
cultural manifestations, tendencies, and influences reveals nothing
short of a desire to heal, through both confrontation and empathy,
the wounds of history."--American Book Review
"What is most gratifying about Komunyakaa's [poems] . . . is their
power to convince us that the individual imagination is more than
equal to the most excruciating historical burden."--New Yorker
"Komunyakaa is a poet of the human heart, in all its joys and
horrors, fiercely present as it pounds awy at the center of every
human being's consciousness. He enlarges our idea of what poetry
is, challenging us to go beyond our own narrow definitions . . .
Buy it now, find your own peaceful corner of our shared and
imperfect paradise, and prepare yourself to be robbed of all you
thought you knew, to experience criminal bliss."--Washington Post
Book World
"What is most gratifying about Komunyakaa's [poems] . . . is their
power to convince us that the individual imagination is more than
equal to the most excruciating historical burden."--New
Yorker
"In this first collection since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Neon
Vernacular: New & Selected Poems (1994), Komunyakaa brings his
lush, propulsive, myth-making language to a wide range of subjects:
Charlie Parker and Ishi; the California Indian; the wildlife of
Australia and South Africa.... Here, as in the work of kindred
spirits the Beats, a deliberately raw poetry is fruitfully thrown
in with the cooked. The resulting vision of paradise -- 'the same
feeling that drives/ sap through mango leaves, / up into the
fruit's sweet/ flesh & stony pit' -- is a compelling
one."--Publishers Weekly
"Komunyakaa's heroic attempt to reconcile so many different
cultural manifestations, tendencies, and influences reveals nothing
short of a desire to heal, through both confrontation and empathy,
the wounds of history."--American Book Review
"What is most gratifying about Komunyakaa's [poems] . . . is their
power to convince us that the individual imagination is more than
equal to the most excruciating historical burden."--New
Yorker
"Komunyakaa is a poet of the human heart, in all its joys and
horrors, fiercely present as it pounds awy at the center of every
human being's consciousness. He enlarges our idea of what poetry
is, challenging us to go beyond our own narrow definitions . . .
Buy it now, find your own peaceful corner of our shared and
imperfect paradise, and prepare yourself to be robbed of all you
thought you knew, to experience criminal bliss."--Washington
Post Book World
In this first collection since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems (1994), Komunyakaa brings his lush, propulsive, myth-making language to a wide range of subjects: Charlie Parker and Ishi; the California Indian; the wildlife of Australia and South Africa. All are the title's "thieves," casing the joint and then snatching the bliss brought to us by the senses: "the lips,/ salt & honeycomb on the tongue.../ how everything begs/ blood into song & prayer/ inside an egg." Such pleasures are found and taken despite the lingering pain of Vietnam, where "the earth swings on a bellrope, limp as a body bag tied to a limb, and the moon overflows with blood," and the dark history of Western culture. "The Tally," a brilliant reckoning of 18th-century trade, reveals the taint even intellectual history bears: "They're counting nails,/ barrels of salt pork,/ sacks of tea and sugar.../ They're uncrating hymnals,/ lace, volumes of Hobbes,/ Rousseau & kegs of rum./ ...They're counting women/ & men." But Komunyakaa, a Princeton professor, also finds resonance in that culture, invoking Pascal, Goya and "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" as sources of meaning and joy, along with "Cracker Jacks" and "Art Tatum's keys." Here, as in the work of kindred spirits the Beats, a deliberately raw poetry is fruitfully thrown in with the cooked. The resulting vision of paradise‘"the same feeling that drives/ sap through mango leaves,/ up into the fruit's sweet/ flesh & stony pit"‘is a compelling one. (Mar.)
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