Quote

Poetry is a process of getting back to the unconscious. Hence, I am always writing-even when I'm not facing the white space. I feel writers are like reservoirs of images. We take in what is around us.

Yusef Komunyakaa

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Yusef Komunyakaa
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: April 29
Author
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Bogalusa
Louisiana
James William Brown
Jr
Like
Around
Unconscious
Back
Images
Take
Writers
Feel
Poetry
Feels
Getting
Writing
Space
Reservoirs
Even
White
Hence
Always
Process
Facing

More quotes by Yusef Komunyakaa

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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.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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.
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I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue.
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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 Komunyakaa
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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.
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Whoever said men hit harder when women are around, is right. Word for word, we beat the love out of each other.
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We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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Through the years I have seen myself as a peaceful person, but the awareness of the anger is part of that process.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I think of language as our first music.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I am this space my body believes in.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I define poetry as celebration and confrontation. When we witness something, are we responsible for what we witness? That's an on-going existential question. Perhaps we are and perhaps there's a kind of daring, a kind of necessary energetic questioning. Because often I say it's not what we know, it's what we can risk discovering.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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Tonight I feel the stars are out to use me for target practice.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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Cursing themselves in ragged dreamsfire 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 moneyfloat from hand to hand. The next momenta rocket pushes a white fistthrough night sky, & they scatter like birds& fall into the shape their liveshave become.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.
Yusef Komunyakaa