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 More Quotes by Yusef Komunyakaa More Quotes From Yusef Komunyakaa I am this space my body believes in. Yusef Komunyakaa spacebodybelieve 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 rapresponsibilitybelieve I knew life Yusef Komunyakaa lighthopedark 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 hammerstoolsfather Tonight I feel the stars are out Yusef Komunyakaa targetstarspractice 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-amorderneeds 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 slaverysilencemoving We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project. Yusef Komunyakaa embraceprojects 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 tryingbelievepast 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 lonelyartistthinking 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 addictionlanguagedecision 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 spacewhitewriting 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 shapesimportantideas 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 celebrationriskkind I said that love heals from inside. Yusef Komunyakaa love-healshealsaid Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do. Yusef Komunyakaa poetlanguagematter 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 hooklightdream I think of language as our first music. Yusef Komunyakaa languagefirststhinking 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 talkingwayideas There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't Yusef Komunyakaa whitebelievethinking
