Yusef Komunyakaa Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

I knew life
Began where I stood in the dark,
Looking out into the light.

Yusef Komunyakaa
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
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
Whoever said men hit harder when women are around, is right. Word for word, we beat the love out of each other.

Yusef Komunyakaa
Tonight I feel the stars are out
to use me for target practice.

Yusef Komunyakaa
There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't
think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry
of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems
with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long
before poets had to deal with the page and white
space... it's natural.

Yusef Komunyakaa
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added up to much,
But we couldn't stop
Believing in iron.
Abandoned trucks & cars
Were held to the ground
By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines
Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.

Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.

Yusef Komunyakaa
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
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
How can love heal
the mouth shut this way?
Say something worth breath.

Yusef Komunyakaa
For weeks, for months,
I could taste him in the dusty air.
Do you know how it feels
to have your tongue shaped
from a dead man's name?
Suppose that grenade
hadn't fallen like jackfruit
from a heavy branch,
& Oliver walked in here
today, took a seat beside
Nancy, & began to talk

Yusef Komunyakaa
Unearthly
desire makes man & woman
God's celestial wishbone
to snap at midnight.

Yusef Komunyakaa
Redemptive as a straight razor
against a jugular vein—
unacknowledged & unforgiven.
It's truth we're after here,
hurting for, out in the streets
where my brothers kill each other,
each other's daughters & guardian angels
in the opera of dead on arrival.

Yusef Komunyakaa
When deeds splay before us
precious as gold & unused chances
stripped from the whine-bone,
we know the moment kindheartedness
walks in.

Yusef Komunyakaa
I told my brothers I heard
You & mother making love,
Your low moans like blues
Bringing them into the world.

Yusef Komunyakaa