Yusef Komunyakaa

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Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947) is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, also for Neon Vernacular, and the 2001 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. His subject matter ranges from the African-American experience through rural Southern life before civil rights and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.

He was the oldest of five children and son of a carpenter, born April 29, 1947. He grew up in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana before and during the Civil Rights era, and served in the army from 1965 to 1967, doing a tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War; he acted as an information specialist and editor for the military paper, Southern Cross, covering major actions, interviewing fellow soldiers, and publishing articles on Vietnamese history and literature, which earned him a Bronze Star.

He began writing poetry in 1973 and obtained his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 1975, his M.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado State University in 1978, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine in 1980.

Eventually he became one of the most popular and important American writers of his generation. His first two volumes, Dedications and Other Darkhorses (1977) and Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979) were self-published. Komunyakaa first gained wide recognition for the collection "Copacetic" in 1984, which fused jazz rhythms and syncopation with super-hip colloquialism and the unique, arresting poetic imagery which has since become his trademark. It also outlined an abiding desire in his work to articulate cultural truths that remain unspoken in daily discourse, in the hope that they will bring a sort of redemption: "How can love heal/ the mouth shut this way.../ Say something that resuscitates/ us, behind the masks"

His success continued with "I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head,”published in 1986, and which won the San Francisco Poetry Prize, though his true breakthrough moment came with the publication of "Dien Cai Dau" (Vietnamese for "This Crazy Head"), published in 1988, and which focused on his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and won the Dark Room Poetry Prize. Included, was the poem "Facing It" which records his experience visiting the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington D.C. and has become perhaps Komunyakaa's signature poem:

"He's lost his right arm/ inside the stone. In the black mirror/ a woman's trying to erase names:/ No, she's brushing a boy's hair."

Komunyakaa has written several books since these, including Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part I (2004), Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems, 1975-1999 (2001), Talking Dirty to the Gods(2000), Thieves of Paradise(1998), Neon Vernacular (1994), and Magic City (1992).

After receiving his M.F.A., Komunyakaa began teaching poetry in the New Orleans public school system and Creative Writing at the University of New Orleans. He married Australian novelist Mandy Sayer in 1985, and in the same year, became an associate professor at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. He also held the Ruth Lily Professorship for two years in 1989-1990. He and Sayer were married for ten years. He taught at Indiana University until the fall of 1997, when he became an English professor at Princeton University.

Komunyakaa was also engaged in a long-term relationship with the poet Reetika Vazirani, who killed herself and their child Jehan in 2003.


In 2004, Komunyakaa began a collaboration with dramaturg and theater producer Chad Gracia on a dramatic adaptation of The Epic of Gilgamesh. The play was published in October 2006 by Wesleyan University Press. In spring 2008, New York's 92nd Street Y staged a one-night performance by director Robert Scanlon.

In 2007, Komunyakaa was awarded the Robert Creeley Poetry Award and visited the Parker Damon building to read some of his poetry to a receiving Massachusett's community.

Of poetry in general, Komunyakaa has said, “Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It’s a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question.”

He currently lives in New York City, where he works in New York University’s Creative Writing Program.

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