Yusef Komunyakaa - Louisiana Native Poet

I discovered the poetry of Mr. Yusef Komunyakaa when he appeared at the annual Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge a few years ago. I had never previously read his amazing poetry or even knew that he was a Louisiana native.


Mr. Yusef Komunyakaa was born on April 29, 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. I own "Neon Vernacular" for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poety in 1994, and I share a few of my favorite poems from this book. I'm going to try to share Louisiana poets and authors at least once a week. I'm proud of my state and it's colorful, amazing heritage.


For anyone interested, the annual Louisiana Book Festival will be Saturday, October 17, 2009 at the beautiful State Capital grounds along the mighty Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. I'll be there! Here's the website listing the authors and poets who'll be attending:


http://www.louisianabookfestival.org/authors_genre.html

CORRIGENDA
By Yusef Komunyakaa

I take it back.
The crow doesn't have red wings.
They're pages of dust.
The woman in a dark room
takes the barrel of a .357 magnum
out of her mouth, reclines
on your bed, a Helena Rubinstein smile.
I'm sorry, you won't know your father
by his darksome old clothes.
He won't be standing by that tree.
I haven't salted the tail
of a sparrow.
Erase its song from this page.
I haven't seen the moon
fall open at the golden edge of our sleep.
I haven't been there
like the tumor in each of us.
There's no death that can
hold us together like twin brothers
coming home to bury their mother.
I never said there's a book inside
every tree. I never said I know how
the legless beggar feels when
the memory of his toes itch.
If I did, drunkenness
was then my god & naked dancer.
I take it back.
I'm not a suicidal mooncalf;
you don't have to take my shoelaces.
If you must quote me, remember
I said that love heals from inside.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

PRAISING DARK PLACES

By Yusef Komunyakaa

If an old board laid out in a field

or backyard for a week,

I'd lift it up with a finger,

a tip of a stick.

Once I found a scorpion,

crimson as a hibernating crawfish

as if a rainbow edged underneath;

centipedes & unnameable

insects sank into loam

with a flutter. My first lesson:

beauty can bite. I wanted

to touch scarlet pincers---

warriors that never zapped

their own kind, crowded into

a city cut off from the penalty

of sunlight. The whole rotting

determinism just an inch beneath

the soil. Into the darkness

of opposites, like those racial

fears of the night, I am drawn again,

to conception & birth. Roots of ivy

& farkleberry can hold a board down

to the ground. In this cellular dirt

& calligraphy of excrement,

light is a god-headed

law & weapon.

~*~*~*~*~

BIRDS ON A POWERLINE

By Yusef Komunyakaa

Mama Mary's counting them

again. Eleven black. A single

red one like a drop of blood

against the sky. She's convinced

they've been there two weeks.

I bring her another cup of coffee

& a Fig Newton. I sit here reading

Frances Harper at the enamel table

where I ate teacakes as a boy,

my head clear of voices brought back.

The green smell of the low land returns,

stealing the taste of nitrate.

The deep-winter eyes of the birds

shine in summer light like agate,

as if they could love the heart

out of any wild thing. I stop,

with my finger on a word, listening.

They're on a powerline, a luminous

message trailing a phantom

Goodyear blimp. I hear her say

Jesus, I promised you. Now

He's home safe, I'm ready.

My traveling shoes on. My teeth

in. I got on clean underwear.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dear Faithful Readers: I hope you enjoyed the poems. I tend to get in a rut and only post female poets or very old favorites of mine, so I'm trying to stretch myself and delve deeper into my 189 books of poetry. I'm too 'me' (scatterbrained) to go alphabetically or in any certain order, but I do love my home state and will try hard to educate you all on the poets and authors from my great state which I love. I'll leave you with a few quotes I found in an old journal of mine. Love, Blessings, and Peace,

~*~Marion~*~

"Please do not leave me when my moods make me a burden to you. I need to be heard and to be loved. Stay next to me and give me what I have never had." ~Elizabeth Peters

"We are all healed to the extent that we love ourselves as we are right now---blemishes, vulnerabilities and all---not as we wish we will be at some time in the distant future." ~Marsha Sinetar

"Lately it's occurred to me what a long strange trip it's been." ~from: "Truckin'" by the Grateful Dead

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself." ~Carl Jung