Yusef Komunyakaa was born as James Willie Brown Jr.; named after his father, James Willie Brown. He was born April 29, 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, which was a segregated mill town. During this time was the Civil Rights Movement. Around this time African Americans needed a way to express themselves and jazz poetry was a great way for them to. Jazz poetry was brought up into the 1920s prolonged into the 1950s. But back then, jazz poetry did not mimic the sounds of jazz today. Poets would assimilate the use of syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases of blues and jazz music in their poems. That explains why Yusef uses jazz rhythms in his poems, not only was he very interested in it, but because jazz poetry was a big thing around this time. His grandfather helped him as well, he says, "He was a stowaway, I suppose. And the story was that he was wearing one boy's shoe and one girl's shoe." Learning About Tools. "He taught me to learn the tools, that tools make a job easier, and I see that as paralleling the technique of poetry," says Yusef.
Yusef Komunyakaa changed his name from James Willie Brown Jr. in tribute to his grandfather from the West Indies, and for religious reasons. Yusef first discovered the art of poetry when he was a child in elementary school. His father was an illiterate man, but because Yusef stayed reading the books that his mother purchased for him, he did not turn out like his father. He discovered his sense of rhythm by listening to jazz and blues on the radio. After he completed his years in high school, Yusef enlisted into the U.S Army. He was in the army from 1969-1970. He served as an correspondent and then later he served as an editor for The Southern Cross, which was a military newspaper. For Yusef’s great service in the army, he earned a Bronze Star. After Yusef returned from the Army, he decided that he wanted to go back to school. So what he did was attended the University of Colorado.
Most of Komunyakaa’s poems are very personal. Many of his poems talk about his past such as his childhood, his time in Vietnam, and his hard times in life. He wants his audience and his fans to get personal with him. He wants them to understand exactly what he is trying to say in his poems. He says, "I think of my poems as personal and public at the same time. You could say they serve as psychological overlays. One fits on top of the other, and hopefully there's an ongoing evolution of clarity." He says that he sometimes wishes that he was a painter because the symbols and images that his poems speak, come from his head. He says: I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems." Yusef has many poems. A list of them include: The African Burial Ground, Anger, Blues Chant Hoodoo Revivals, Confluence, Crossing a City Highway, Envoy to Palestine, Envy, Facing It, From Autobiography of My Alter Ego, Gluttony, Grunge, Infidelity, Islands, Kindness, Limes, Lust, Memory of the Murdered Professors at the Jagiellonian, Moonshine, Omens, Please, Poetics, Prize, Rock Me Mercy, Slam Dunk and Hook, Sloth, The Song Thief, Togetherness, We Never Know, and Yellow Jackets. He has many more poems that have not been stated, but all have been very successful.
Yusef has written many books over the years as well. A list of them include: Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979), Copacetic (1984), I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), Dien Cai Dau (1988), Magic City (1992), Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1993), Thieves of Paradise (1998), Blue Notes (2000), Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000), Pleasure Dome (2001), Scandalize My Name: Selected Poems (2002), Taboo (2004), Gilgamesh (2006), Conversations with Yusef Komunyakaa (2010), The Chameleon Couch: Poems (2011) and Condition Red Essays, Interviews and Commentaries (2017). Those aren’t all of his books listed but just as his poems were successful; his books were as well.
Yusef was nominated and had received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for one of his books which was Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1994). He says "I'm happier talking about the process of writing, yes. I'm even happier to have people read my work, I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem." You could tell Yusef was a shy man by the way he would acknowledge his fans and supporters. He would acknowledge them as if he were ashamed or embarrassed. He also won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for the same book. Other awards he has won was the Wallace Stevens Award, The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize, The Thomas Forcade Award, and the Hanes Poetry Prize.
Yusef Komunyakaa is a very successful man. In 1995 to 2005 he has served Chancellor of the Academy of Poets. He taught at Princeton University as a Professor in the Council of Humanities and the Creative Writing Program. He has also taught at the University of New Orleans and Indiana University. Yusef is currently living nicely in New York City unbothered. He is married to an Australian writer named Mandy Jane Sayer and is serving in the New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program as a Distinguished Senior Poet.
Cited Works:
- “Yusef Komunyakaa.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/yusef-komunyakaa.
- “Mina Loy.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 17 Oct. 2016, www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/yusef-komunyakaa.
- “Komunyakaa, Yusef (1947-).” The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed, BlackPast.org, www.blackpast.org/aah/komunyakaa-yusef-1947.
- “Jazz Poetry.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Aug. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_poetry.
- Blumberg, Naomi. “Yusef Komunyakaa.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 30 Nov. 2016, www.britannica.com/biography/Yusef-Komunyakaa.
- Weber, Bruce. “A Poet's Values: It's the Words Over the Man.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 May 1994, www.nytimes.com/1994/05/02/books/a-poet-s-values-it-s-the-words-over-the-man.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=1.
- Google Search, Google, www.google.com/search?q=books%2Bwritten%2Bby%2Byusef%2Bkomunyakaa&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8.
