Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries

Poets on Poetry

by Yusef Komunyakaa, Radiclani Clytus (Editor)

Blue Notes offers an assortment of poet Yusef Komunyakaa's writing on contemporary poetry and music. The book is arranged in four sections. The first gathers essays on the work of poets and blues and jazz musicians influential to Komunyakaa's work, from Langston Hughes and Etheridge Knight to Ma Rainey and Thelonious Monk; the second collects a gallery of Komunyakaa's poems and the poet's commentary about each of them. The third selects interviews that reveal the development of the poet's aesthetic sensibility. The final section consists of four artistic explorations that reflect the poet's current interests. Two of of these texts, "Tenebrae" and "Buddy's Monologue," have been recently performed.
As editor Radiclani Clytus makes clear in the volume's introductory essay, although Komunyakaa's poetry has its roots in the stylistic innovations of early twentieth-century American modernists, his writing often reflects his understanding that a "black" experience should not particularize the presentation of one's art. This volume, according to the editor, is an attempt to understand Komunyakaa's critical eclecticism within the context of his own words.
Yusef Komunyakaa's books of poetry include I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Magic City, Thieves of Paradise , and Neon Vernacular , for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 1994.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, African American

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Yusef Komunyakaa (born April 29, 1947) is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the poetry world.

His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights time period and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Doralee Brooks]

This is a very important book about writing, poetry, art, and the creative process. It's essential reading.