List of Yusef Komunyakaa Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whoever Said Men Hit Harder When Women Are Around, Is Right. Word For Word, We Beat The Love Out Of Each Other.

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.

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.

Through The Years I Have Seen Myself As A Peaceful Person, But The Awareness Of The Anger Is Part Of That Process.

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.

I'm Uncomfortable With The Focus On The Poet And Not On The Poem.

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?