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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.

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
Humans
Close
Play
Player
Like
Pretty
Oliver
Sound
Saxophone
Voice
Lakes
Comes
Plays
Doe
Dialogue
Human
Players

More quotes by 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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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 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.
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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?
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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.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I think of language as our first music.
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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.
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Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language to know the classical rules, even if only to break them and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape.
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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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.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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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I said that love heals from inside.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I am this space my body believes in.
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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Tonight I feel the stars are out to use me for target practice.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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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I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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.
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