Quotes from Yusef Komunyakaa

I originally wanted to embrace the imagery and forthrightness of rap music. There are some interesting, dynamic voices in rap. But I find most of it irresponsible in its overt violence and commercialization of anger. As artists, we believe we can will action through language. If that's the case, we have to take responsibility for what we say.

Through the years I have seen myself as a peaceful person, but the awareness of the anger is part of that process.

I close my eyes and can see men drawing lines in the dust. America pushes through the membrane of mist and smoke, and I'm a small boy again in Bogalusa.

Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It's a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault.

I excavate history. I look at lives buried under too much silence. Periods of time, like slavery, have to be revisited, reimagined, so we can move through them.

I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.

Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.

We were born between Oh Yeah & Goddammit. I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light, & that sometimes I could see Everything through nothing. The backyard trees breathed Like a man running from himself As my brothers backed away From the screendoor.

She lives between the Vale of Kashmir & nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky. The voice speaks of an atlas & a mask, a map of Punjab, an ugly scar from college days on her abdomen, the unsaid credo, but I still can't make the voice say, Look, I'm sorry. I've been dead for a long time.

See her? I was born to read her mind. I can get so close to her my breath is cool on her skin, & she'll be seven blocks away when a cry leaps into her throat & she knows I untied the money belt hidden under her velvet jacket.

I am this space my body believes in.

Whoever said men hit harder when women are around, is right. Word for word, we beat the love out of each other.

I've been here before, dreaming myself backwards, among grappling hooks of light. True to the seasons, I've lived every word spoken. Did I walk into someone's nightmare?

Now I have beaten a song back into you, rise and walk away like a panther.

Go & tell your drinking buddies & psychoanalyst your neighbor has risen from the ashes. I wonder if I should tell you about the love letters hidden behind the doorjamb. This house still stands among my lavender flowers. Tell your inheritors to think of me when they smile up at the sky.

Putting my hands on. What April couldn't fix Wasn't worth the time: Egg shell & dried placenta Light as memory. Patches of fur, feathers, & bits of skin. A nest Of small deaths among anemone. A canopy edged over, shadowplaying The struggle underneath As if it never happened

Years ago you followed someone here, in love with breath kissing the nape of your neck, back when it was easy to be at least two places at once.

Foolhearted mindreader, help us see how the heart begs, how fangs of opprobrium possess our eyes.

I glimpsed Alice in Wonderland. Her voice smelled like an orange, though I'd never peeled an orange. I knocked on the walls, in a circle.

My doors enter from the sidestreet, my windows painted basement black, my mouth kisses the blues harp, my heart hides like notes locked in a cedar chest.

A goddess of dawn scooted under a zing of barbed wire to witness your birth.

The older I get the quicker Christmas comes, but if I had to give up the heavenly taste of Guinness dark, I couldn't live another goddamn day. Darling, you can chisel that into my headstone.

Cursing themselves in ragged dreams fire has singed the edges of, they know a slow dying the fields have come to terms with. Shimmering fans work against the heat & smell of gunpowder, making money float from hand to hand. The next moment a rocket pushes a white fist through night sky, & they scatter like birds & fall into the shape their lives have become.