Yusef Komunyakaa - Research Paper Example

? Yusef Komunyakaa Introduction Few American poets have as much to say about the idea of America and contemporary American society as the poet Yusef Komunyakaa. Through his poetry he shows us what it means to live in the United States of today, and the pleasures and pains of such a life. His complex background and unique voice show the power of poetry. Throughout his many years at the craft he has risen to become one of the foremost writers of his age. But his work is far from laudatory. Komunyakaa explores many complex and painful chapters in American life, many reflected through his background. He is not afraid to celebrate what is good, but nor is he unwilling to explore what is darkest and saddest about America. Biography Komunyakaa was born in Louisiana in 1947 into a family that was recently from Africa (Cocola, 211). He joined the army when he was a young man and fought abroad. When he returned to the United States, he began writing poetry and publishing and teaching. Over the years, he has won numerous awards both in the U.S. and internationally. His work takes as one of its major themes the dislocations and traumas of African-American life. It uses many of the techniques of this more traditional style to great effect. From the beginning it was clear that Komunyakaa was a wilful man who saw himself as different. His original birth-name was James Willie Brown, but he changed it to his grandfather's name when he was young (Pereira, 45). His grandfather had been a stowaway from Trinidad. The poet's experience in Vietnam as an American soldier inform many aspects of his work. The Vietnam War was a difficult time for America. It was a war far from home against a people that Americans knew little about. The draft forced many people who would not normally fight in wars to participate. Back home, protests and riots broke out and brother turned against brother. Civil strife was common. For Komunyakaa this experience was a galvanizing one. But he did not see it through the mainstream lens of White America. He is not like other soldiers as his relationship with his country is more complex due to his ethnicity. He did not feel the same in Vietnam as the other American soldiers; indeed, he felt somewhat at home in the alien land (Cocola, 215). Influences and dialogue among writers Yusef Komunyakaa has many influences. Jazz is a key one. In a sense, Komunyakaa sees in jazz the same improvisational and emotive capacity of poetry. He also sees jazz as highly dependent on the blues and other traditions (Komunyakaa and Clytus, 121). But he is more formal than many jazz practitioners. He takes as inspiration the work of the Harlem poet Langston Hughes and even a man as remote as T.S. Eliot. Clearly, his own father is an important influence. In his father, Komunyakaa sees just how far he has come and how much he has accomplished in his years on this planet. While he may occasionally criticize America, Komunyakaa clearly recognizes that only in this country can the son of an illiterate man become a world famous poet. My father could only sign His name, but he'd look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This beautiful ending of a poem shows how Komunyakaa sees his own poetry as a product of accumulation and hard work over the years. That no single poem or brick stands alone appears to be the lesson he has taken from his father. Like a cathedral starts with a single brick, so a poem starts with a single line. The poet understands that the line cannot be written without education, without literacy, and so he has sought these things out. Writing theories/ style and technique Komunyakaa's writing theories are at the core of his work. A great example is the poem “Facing It” is an extraordinary journey through war and memory, and is surely one of Komunyakaa's best. At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the poet recalls his own horrifying experiences and is overcome with emotion. He remembers his comrades who have died in the bloody fray and his own complex feelings about the war and his place in it. But the memorial is more than a black slab of marble with names carved into it. In Komunyakaa's hands it is also a mirror reflecting contemporary America. It stands for something even more than the men who died in a distant country. While people visiting the memorial may be united in grief, they are also, to this day divided as well by more superficial aspects of their lives. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. 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. We see that his style is straightforward and not ruined by postmodernism. His technique is to write in a language that can be understood but has a real resonance. Critical reception Critics have been almost universal in their praise for Komunyakaa. As Toi Derricotte wrote for the Kenyon Review, "He takes on the most complex moral issues, the most harrowing ugly subjects of our American life. His voice, whether it embodies the specific experiences of a black man, a soldier in Vietnam, or a child in Bogalusa, Louisiana, is universal. It shows us in ever deeper ways what it is to be human." What this critic is expressing is a key aspect of Komunyakaa's poetry, namely that identity is a complex factor and one which can have both negative and positive consequences. Komunyakaa's background as an African-American in Louisiana is surely a vital aspect of this. Other critics are happy to praise the jazz-inspired aspects of his work and the “epic and global” quality of his recent work (Pereira, 46). Performance/presentation of the writer's work The poet gives frequent readings of his work at university campuses and clubs around the country. He is an active promoter of poetry. Additionally, he has published more than a dozen books which have sold very well. Cultural/historic issues and/ or influences. The poet began to write during the civil war movement when America was changing irrevocably. This is also an important influence on his work. He is alienated from power structures and the American mainstream (Komunyakaa, 2005). We see history as being one of the main determining points in Komunyakaa's most fascinating poetry. Komunyakaa in his own words is a key proponent of this idea. He is a constant opponent of the status quo, of what makes American poetry appear monolithic to some outside of it. There’s a sameness about American poetry that I don’t think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long before poets had to deal with the page and white space . . . it’s natural. . . . Too many contemporary American poets would love to dismiss this fact . . . But still, if you were to take many magazines and cut the names off poems, you would have a single collection that could be by any given poet; you could put one name on it, as if the poems were all by one person. True, a writer can say almost anything in America and have it completely overlooked, yet I think we should have more individual voices. (Komunyakaa, 1990). Few poets in America have made as significant an impact on poetry as Yusef Komunyakaa has in recent years. He is not like other writers and he is strongly influenced by his upbringing in Louisiana and experiences abroad. He works hard to bring together the disparate patterns of his life into a comprehensive and shimmering whole. In his best work he succeeds spectacularly. Work consulted Derricotte, Toi. "The Tension between Memory and Forgetting in the Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa," The Kenyon Review 15:4, Fall 1993. Cocola, James Michael. Topopoiesis: Contemporary American poetries and the imaginative making of place. ProQuest, 2009. Komunyakaa, Yusuf. "Lines of Tempered Steel: An Interview with Vincente F. Gotera," Callaloo 13:2 1990. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/komunyakaa/poetry.htm --------------------------. “Seeing and Re-Seeing: An Exchange between Yusef Komunyakaa and Toi Derricotte,” Callaloo 28:3, Summer 2005. Komunyakaa, Yusef, and Radiclani Clytus. Blue notes: essays, interviews, and commentaries. University of Michigan Press, 2000. Pereira, Malin. Into a Light Both Brilliant and Unseen: Conversations with Contemporary Black Poets. University of Georgia Press, 2010. Read More