"Lines of Tempered Steel": An Interview With Yusef Komunyakaa

Abstract

Yusef Komunyakaa has published seven collections of poems: Dedications and Other Darkhorses (1977), Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979), Copacetic (1984), I Apologize for the Eyes in my Head (1986), Toys in a Field (1987), Dien Cai Dau (1988), and February in Sydney (1989). At present, Komunyakaa has, among other projects, two books of poetry in progress: Magic City (poems about his childhood in rural Louisiana) and Thieves of Paradise (poems about his experiences and life in Australia). Poems in these forthcoming collections have appeared in such literary journals as The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and River Styx. Komunyakaa's poetry arising from his experiences as a Vietnam veteran-collected in Toys in a Field and Dien Cai Dau-has attracted much attention: Dien Cai Dau has gone into a second edition and was listed in the 1988 Young Adults/American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults List; several poems from this collection have also been translated into French, German, and Italian. Komunyakaa's place within the growing canon of soldier-poets was solidified in 1989 by the inclusion of his work in W. D. Ehrhart's anthology Unaccustomed Mercy: Soldier-Poets of the Vietnam War, which definitively identifies the twelve best Vietnam-veteran poets currently writing. Another important focus in Komunyakaa's work is jazz. Many poems in his earlier work, particularly in Copacetic and I Apologize for the Eyes in my Hoad, either center on jazz as subject or mimetically reproduce the music-poem as jazz improvisation. Recently, Komunyakaa appeared in a panel discussion on and with poets William Matthews and Robert Kelly at Macon College. He is also currently co-editing, with poet and jazz saxophonist Sascha Feinstein, The Jazz Poetry Anthology, forthcoming in 1991. Komunyakaa's recent chapbook February in Sydney melds this interest in jazz with a fascination with Australia, especially Aboriginal poetry and culture. Komunyakaa has received many awards for his poetry. Perhaps the most prestigious of these were two Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981 and 1987. His collection I Apologize for the Eyes in my Head won the San Francisco Poetry Center Award for the best book of poetry published in 1986. He also currently holds the Lilly Professorship of Poetry at Indiana University. It is in this context that I know Yusef Komunyakaa. While I was a student in the MFA program at Indiana University, Yusef was my primary mentor. It was also through his influence that a burgeoning interest in poetry written by Vietnam veterans eventually coalesced into my doctoral dissertation. But his greatest effect on me has been as a teacher of creative writing; Yusef is that rarest of writing teachers-a person who does not preach write as I do but rather write as best as you can, in your own voice and style. He is extraordinarily adept at psyching out