Quote

Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.

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
Kind
Hearts
Guns
Never
Realize
Spoken
People
Realizing
Vietnam
Violence
Helped
Word
Aim
Look
Gun
Booby
Looks
Terror
Impersonal
Heart
Horror
Traps

More quotes by Yusef Komunyakaa

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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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It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.
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I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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 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 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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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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I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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I said that love heals from inside.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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My great-grandfather Melvin had been a carpenter - so was my father - and they taught me the value of tools: saws, hammers, chisels, files and rulers. It all dealt with conciseness and precision. It eliminated guesswork. One has to know his tools, so he doesn't work against himself.
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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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 am this space my body believes in.
Yusef Komunyakaa
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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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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