Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall

Poetry Magazine has called YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA "one of our period's most significance and individual voices," and indeed has he dazzled readers and garnered critical acclaim for decades. Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, at the start of the Civil Rights Movement, he creates poems rich with history and storytelling, suffused with the rhythms of jazz and blues. Komunyakaa's work relies on both intense emotional logic and creative improvisation, aiming always for the surprise note, that entryway into the secret universe of each poem. Author of seventeen books, with the Pulitzer Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize among his many honors, he is currently Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University's graduate creative writing program.