Apr

24

All Jazzed Up: Yusef Komunyakaa (Part 2)

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 24, 2007 |

Yusef Komunyakaa’s own personal history, particularly his childhood, which is the subject of his book Magic City (University Press of New England, 1992), is very important to him. He’s imagined his great-grandparents’ entry into this country in his poem Mismatched Shoes, and wrote an incredible poem, originally appearing in Neon Vernacular, titled, Songs For My Father. His father, who was a carpenter and never considered poetry a real profession, asked Komunyakaa to write him a poem. This is perhaps the hardest request anyone can make of an artist, especially when the relationship is as close as the one between father and son. The desire is always to produce something worthy of the relationship, but the risk of failure is so great because of the emotional connection. Komunyakaa never completed the poem in his father’s lifetime, but in one of the “songs” he sums up the contradictions of his father’s personality:

You were a quiet man
Who’d laugh like a hyena
On a hill, with your head
Thrown back, gazing up at the sky.

Komunyakaa’s father was also a carpenter, and he himself is clearly a careful, considerate maker of structures out of words, not wood, such as in the opening poem from his book Magic City:

Venus’-flytraps

I am five,
Wading out into deep

Sunny grass,

Unmindful of snakes
& yellowjackets, out

To the yellow flowers

Quivering in sluggish heat.
Don’t mess with me

‘Cause I have my Lone Ranger

Six-shooter. I can hurt
You with questions

Like silver bullets.

The tall flowers in my dreams are
Big as the First State Bank,

& they eat all the people

Except the ones I love.
They have women’s names,

With mouths like where

Babies come from. I a five.
I’ll dance for you

If you close your eyes. No

Peeping through your fingers.
I don’t supposed to be

This close to the tracks.

One afternoon I saw
What a train did to a cow.

Sometimes I stand so close

I can see the eyes
Of men hiding in boxcars.

Sometimes they wave

& holler for me to get back. I laugh
When trains make the dogs

Howl. Their ears hurt.

I also know bees
Can’t live without flowers.

I wonder why Daddy

Calls Mama honey.
All the bees in the world

Live in little white houses

Except the ones in these flowers.
All sticky & sweet inside.

I wonder what death tastes like.

Sometimes I toss the butterflies
Back into the air.

I wish I knew why

The music in my head
Makes me scared.

But I know things

I don’t supposed to know.
I could start walking

& never stop.

These yellow flowers
Go on forever.

Almost to Detroit.

Almost to the sea.
My mama says I’m a mistake.

That I made her a bad girl.

My playhouse is underneath
Our house, & I hear people

Telling each other secrets.

(Listen to Yusef Komunyakaa read this poem)

I’m not blind to the fact that Komunyakaa is black, but it’s hard to know exactly how much emphasis to put on this. I didn’t want to put it at the front of this review, but he writes frequently about racial tensions, and very poignantly too. Paying too much attention to race or even the fact that he’s a veteran risks limiting him to a certain niche even though his poetry, in addition to his other writing, cuts across a wide range of subjects. If I disregard his biography I lose the fact that poetry–not just Komunyakaa’s but any poetry–is written by people whose life experience informs and illuminates their work. Race, in many of his poems, is not a barrier but a bridge by which he makes an emotional connection with his readers. Rather than pushing us away, he allows us to see the world through his eyes. My favorite example is his poem Blackberries:

They left my hands like a printer’s
Or thief’s before a police blotter
& pulled me into early morning’s
Terrestrial sweetness, so thick
The damp ground was consecrated
Where they fell among a garland of thorns.

Although I could smell old lime-covered
History, at ten I’d still hold out my hands
& berries fell into them. Eating from one
& filling a half gallon with the other,
I ate the mythology & dreamt
Of pies & cobbler, almost

Needful as forgiveness. My bird dog Spot
Eyed blue jays & thrashers. The mud frogs
In rich blackness, hid from daylight.
An hour later, beside City Limits Road
I balanced a gleaming can in each hand,
Limboed between worlds, repeating one dollar.

The big blue car made me sweat.
Wintertime crawled out of the windows.
When I leaned closer I saw the boy
& girl my age, in the wide back seat
Smirking, & it was then I remembered my fingers
Burning with thorns among berries too ripe to touch.

(Listen to Yusef Komunyakaa read this poem)

Exactly halfway through the third stanza he leaves the blackberries behind and everything changes, and yet the weight of the poem is on the berries. It’s hard to know how much to say about this because, while his race and his life experience are important to him, and while many of his poems are profoundly personal, they’re meaningful to me in spite of my very different background. He’s also profoundly influenced by jazz, and even though I couldn’t tell Monk from Mingus I still think I appreciate the jazz quality of his poetry. 

    

So I try to strike a balance the same way I do reading, say, the poetry of Charles Simic, Adrienne Rich, or even Emily Dickinson. Simic is Serbian, and was born in Yugoslavia; Adrienne Rich is a lesbian; Emily Dickinson spent the last years of her life wearing only white and rarely coming out of her bedroom. I don’t forget these facts when I read their poetry; occasionally they add a little depth to a specific poem, but ultimately any artist, and person, is more than the sum of their biography. With that in mind, here’s his poem Unnatural State of the Unicorn from his book I Apologize For The Eyes In My Head (Wesleyan University Press, 1986):

Introduce me first as a man.
Don’t mention superficial laurels
the dead heap up on the living.
I am a man. Cut me & I bleed.
Before embossed limited editions,
before fat artichoke hearts marinated
in rich sauce & served with imported wines,
before antics & Agnus Dei,
before the stars in your eyes
mean birth sign or Impression,
I am a man. I’ve scuffled
in mudholes, broken teeth in a grinning skull
like the moon behind bars. I’ve done it all
to be known as myself. No titles.
I have principles. I won’t speak
on the natural state of the unicorn
in literature or self-analysis.
I have no birthright to prove,
no insignia, no secret
password, no fleur-de-lis.
My initials aren’t on a branding iron.
I’m standing here in unpolished
shoes & faded jeans, sweating
my manly sweat. Inside my skin,
loving you, I am the space
my body believes in.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. James on April 25, 2007 12:46 pm

    I like your point that to understand the author/poet/artist is to also add depth and greater appreciation to the work.

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