Best 36 quotes of Yusef Komunyakaa on MyQuotes

Yusef Komunyakaa

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    Blue is the insides of something mysterious and lonely. I'd look at fish and birds, thinking the sky and water colored them. The first abyss is blue. An artist must go beyond the mercy of satin or water-from a gutty hue to that which is close to royal purple. All seasons and blossoms inbetween. Lavender. Theatrical and outrageous electric. Almost gray. True and false blue. Water and oil. The gas jet breathing in oblivion. The unstruck match. The blue of absence. The blue of deep presence. The insides of something perfect.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.

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    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    I said that love heals from inside.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

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

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

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

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    Tonight I feel the stars are out to use me for target practice.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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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    Yusef Komunyakaa

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

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    I ate mythology & dreamt' - Yusef Komunyakaa (Blackberries)

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    See how forgiving - how brave nature is.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    Title: Blue Light Lounge Sutra For The Performance Poets At Harold Park Hotel the need gotta be so deep words can't answer simple questions all night long notes stumble off the tongue & color the air indigo so deep fragments of gut & flesh cling to the song you gotta get into it so deep salt crystalizes on eyelashes the need gotta be so deep you can vomit up ghosts & not feel broken till you are no more than a half ounce of gold in painful brightness you gotta get into it blow that saxophone so deep all the sex & dope in this world can't erase your need to howl against the sky the need gotta be so deep you can't just wiggle your hips & rise up out of it chaos in the cosmos modern man in the pepperpot you gotta get hooked into every hungry groove so deep the bomb locked in rust opens like a fist into it into it so deep rhythm is pre-memory the need gotta be basic animal need to see & know the terror we are made of honey cause if you wanna dance this boogie be ready to let the devil use your head for a drum

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    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.

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    Yusef Komunyakaa

    You can two-time satan But you can't lick the Holy Ghost.