Yusef Komunyakaa Quotes

• I am this space my body believes in.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Believe, Space, Body

  Yusef Komunyakaa (2013). “Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems”, p.139, Wesleyan University Press

  53 Copy quote

• 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

  Who I Am, Order, Needs

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Believe, Rap, Responsibility

  33 Copy quote

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

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Hope, Dark, Light

  Yusef Komunyakaa (1992). “Magic City”, p.24, Wesleyan University Press

  21 Copy quote

• We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Embrace, Projects

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

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Stars, Practice, Target

  Yusef Komunyakaa (2013). “Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems”, p.69, Wesleyan University Press

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Moving, Silence, Slavery

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, White, Space

  Yusef Komunyakaa, Radiclani Clytus (2000). “Blue notes: essays, interviews, and commentaries”, Univ of Michigan Pr

  11 Copy quote

• I think of language as our first music.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Thinking, Firsts, Language

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Talking, Way

  Yusef Komunyakaa, Radiclani Clytus (2000). “Blue notes: essays, interviews, and commentaries”, Univ of Michigan Pr

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Father, Hammers, Tools

  Yusef Komunyakaa, Radiclani Clytus (2000). “Blue notes: essays, interviews, and commentaries”, Univ of Michigan Pr

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Risk, Celebration, Kind

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Addiction, Decision, Language

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Lonely, Thinking, Artist

  144 Copy quote

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

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Matter, Language, Poet

  7 Copy quote

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

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Years, Peaceful, Awareness

  4 Copy quote

• I said that love heals from inside.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Said, Heal, Love Heals

  Yusef Komunyakaa (2013). “Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems”, p.84, Wesleyan University Press

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Believe, Past, Trying

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

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Focus, Poet, Uncomfortable

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Important, Shapes

  6 Copy quote

• 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?

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Dream, Light, Hook

  Yusef Komunyakaa (1998). “Thieves of Paradise”, p.14, Wesleyan University Press

  9 Copy 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

  Heart, Gun, People

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yusef Komunyakaa

  Eye, Men, Boys

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Psychics, Practice, Black

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Years, Way

  4 Copy quote

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