Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
Ebook
This Pulitzer Prize–winning collection pairs twelve new poems with work from seven previous volumes by “one of the most extraordinary poets writing today” (Kenyon Review).
The poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa traverses psychological and physical landscapes, mining personal memory to understand the historical and social contexts that shape experience. Neon Vernacular charts the development of his characteristic themes and concerns by gathering work from seven of his previous collections, along with a dozen new poems that continue the autobiographical trajectory of his previous collection, Magic City.
Here, Komunyakaa shares an intimate and evocative life journey, from his childhood in Bogalusa, Louisiana—once a center of Klan activity and later a focus of Civil Rights efforts—to his stormy relationship with his father, his high school football days, and his experience of the Vietnam War and his difficult return home. Many of the poems collected here are drawn from limited editions and are no longer available.
"Komunyakaa's best poems are jazzy and improvisational, razor-sharp pieces that tell us more about our culture than any news broadcast" —Bloomsbury Review
"This collection is comprised of poems from seven of Komunyakaa's previous collections. A master at interweaving memory and history to shape his experiences into narratives, he enriches his poems with details . . . As an African American, he defines a culture with striking imagery that is often misunderstood by mainstream readers. Highly recommended" —Library Journal
"Quite simply, Komunyakaa is one of the most extraordinary poets writing today. He takes on the most complex moral issues, the most harrowing ugly subjects of our American life. His voice, whether it embodies the specific experiences of a black man, a soldier in Vietnam, or a child in Bogalusa, Louisiana, is universal. It shows us in ever deeper ways what it is to be human." —Toi Derricotte, Kenyon Review
"Yusef Komunyakaa is a poet whose work, over ten years and many books, continues to grow in complexity and beauty, Neon Vernacular includes some of the best Vietnam testimony, in verse or prose, that I've ever read. Komunyakaa's whole oeuvre explores and re/members the double consciousness at work in the construction of African-American male identity." —Marilyn Hacker, The Nation
- Title: Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
- Author: Yusef Komunyakaa
- Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780819574534, 9780819512116, 0819512117, 0819574538
- Resource ID: LLS:9780819574534
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-03T19:53:40Z
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA is a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing at Princeton University. He is the author of seven Wesleyan titles including Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (2001), Thieves of Paradise (1998), Magic City (1992), and Dien Cai Dau (1988).