YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

Herewith, our two final, main postings of the semester, by Maggie and Amy, respectively:

The Frank Insinuation of 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, when asked “What is poetry?”

Not a full frontal assault, maybe, but certainly as a whole, Komunyakaa overwhelmed me with a patented brand of frank insinuation. Paradoxical, no? Well, I’ll explain. He’s frank because he explores issues of sexuality, race, identity, corrigenda with a candor that is several steps above the poetry I’m used to. In fact he does so to the extent of anatomizing certain taboos in a way that is either hyper-confessional (relative to what most people would feel comfortable implying about themselves) or indicative of a supple imagination (capable of rounding out the speakers of his poems, if indeed they are not always himself, with arresting detail.) A poem I think of specifically is “Gloria’s Cues,” a work that seems to delve into a passive and inconsequential lapse into something close to pedophilia, without any evident self-damnation or damnation of the speaker. In general, there is a lot that Komunyakaa unpacks, and sometimes I as the reader am not necessarily surprised at what is found in the suitcase, but maybe just a bit jarred by being privy to it. But he maintains the art of insinuation in his narratives by showing very little consequence following various acts and feelings. I think that this tactic is a specific strength of poetry: these are not morality tales. His isolated poems tend not to make moral arguments. Rather, Komunyakaa uses strategically placed disclaimers, corrigendas as he calls them, to advocate the power of speech that sometimes sacrifices comfort for honesty.

“Gloria’s Clues” is one poem out of many that explores sexuality and in many ways, this particular subject matter seems multiply bonded with the various other themes Komunyakaa insinuates. Rarely is sex present in his poems as a pure celebration of a good lustful romp. Often, it is woven into family relationships, race, violence, the human as an animal, all of which are concerns that pop up often in NEON VERNACULAR. In the neon framework that sex tends provide, he presents scenario after scenario that constantly ask: what is this? why does it happen in our species, in our communities? what is wrong with it or right about it? His poem SONGS FOR MY FATHER presents many of these struggling questions. He reminds us from the start that his and his brothers’ complex relationship with their father began with…sex:

I told my brothers I heard
You & mother making love,
Your low moans like a blues
Bringing them into the world.
I didn’t know if you were laughing
Or crying.

The uncertainty of those last two lines quickly turn to violence as he introduces the tension within this father/son relationship:

Sometimes I think they’re still jealous
Of our closeness, having forgotten
We had to square-off and face each other,
My fists balled & cocked by haymakers.

Thus, Komunyakaa sets up the variable nature of his relationship with his father that echoes throughout the poem. He tells of fond memories (“Sometimes you could be/ That man on a read bicycle,/ With me on the handlebars….”) and he tells of his rage at having encountered explicit family violence (“Goddamn you. Goddamn you./ If you hit her again, I’ll sail through/ That house like a dustdevil.”) But he also tells of the strange union between himself and his father, which culminates in his confession of a shared sense of sexuality with his father, represented by the fact that they slept with the same woman:

Since I sought out one of your lovers
Before you were dead
Though years had passed
& you were with someone else…
Yes, she cried out,
But she didn’t sing your name
When I planted myself in her.

Through this, Komunyakaa implies his own undeniable self that have been passed down to him from his father, turns the poem swiftly from what seems like a renunciation of what his father was capable of to a total admission of his similarities with his father. It is startling, but I find it gracious in a strange sort of way, that he establishes himself in contrast to this man whose behavior he has fought against, but offers his own behavior for inspection. It’s as if he says, “But wait a minute, now that I have your attention, don’t feel sorry for me. Examine me. What do you see? What is this? Why does it happen?”

Throughout his work, Komunyakaa periodically offers the reader a breath in poems where he explains his technique a bit, as in “Safe Subjects”:

How can love heal
the mouth shut this way?
Say something worth breath.
Let it surface, recapitulate…
Say something about pomogranates
Say something about real love.
Yes, true love—more than
parted lips, than parted legs
in sorrow’s darkroom of potash
and blues. Let the brain stumble
from its hidingplace.

These moments, in “Safe Subjects”, “Corrigenda”, and others serve to allow me to distance myself from the striking nature of his content and ask the pertinent questions that his poetry begs. How does Komunyakaa serve us, his anticipating readers, by putting this down on paper? What is particular to the experience of reading poetry that enters into a discourse that would not normally be socially acceptable? Is it because poetry is a passive art form, meaning, it moves only as the reader moves through it (and do you agree with this assertion)? In discussing in another class last week Sade’s text (one can hardly call it a novel) JUSTINE, a work saturated with radically taboo material, some grotesque to the extent that I really hesitate to discuss it in the same breathe as Komunyakaa, a few people said that they just had to close the book when it reached the upper limits of raunchy. This incited a discussion of the power that is vested in the reader: readers can stop the movement of the text they are reading. This is not necessarily true of many of our most modern media forms: many of them move on their own, and in a way that I think is more swiftly intoxicating than reading. There was never a moment when I felt like closing NEON VENACULAR; nothing Komunyakaa wrote shocked me, mostly I found his candor intriguing and his periodic disclaimers soothing and refocusing. Ultimately, I think Komunyakaa’s refusal to damn the behavior in his poetry expanded its use. I find myself much more full of questions and internal debate than I am when I’ve just read a poet whose voice I comfortably relate to.

Posted by: Margaret Poist | April 27, 2008 at 09:34 PM

Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Neon Vernacular”– the title nearly says it all. A number of the selected poems, and most of the new ones (which I liked the best, I think), attest to Komunyakaa’s “vision”  as one that deliberately invokes the past, present, and future. If Warren and his clan consistently look over their shoulders to the past (and sometimes frantically try to “keep up” with the present), Komunyakaa seamlessly moves from his childhood, to Vietnam, to the implications all past/present experiences have for the future. While it seems his identity is quite grounded in /tied to his upbringing in LA (Louisiana– not California, or “Lower Alabama”), or the “vernacular,” he is also consciously responding to how that identity fairs as (and affects) an adult who has traveled far from rural LA, into the “neon,” and then returns, altered, in some respects, but not entirely. “Salt” is illustrative of this– he cannot even remember the woman’s name (“Lisa, Leona, Loretta?”) but can give a full account of the atrocities in her family history, and she, though as children together they “played doctor & house”) responds to him by grabbing her purse and pulling at her skirt. In other words, because of the complicated history of their families (as his relationship to hers is one of “housekeepers/ & handymen”), and in spite of their personal history of interacting as children, they do not even speak when they encounter one another as adults.

Additionally, “Neon Vernacular,” in a more general rather than personal way, appears in Komunyakaa’s regular invocation of Hughes (Langston not Ted), and also of Dunbar (particularly in poems from “Copacetic” with all of its masks). This seems entirely appropriate, as Hughes set about for himself a similar (but of course different, as well) project of making the “vernacular” “neon.” I’m thinking of course of Komunyakaa’s persistent incorporation of jazz and blues into his work– evidenced by overt allusions and (obviously) by titles: “Changes; or, Reveries at a Window...,” “Elegy for Thelonious,” “Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival,” etc.– the list is entirely too long. But also of poems like “The Plea,” with its refrain of “Bop, bop, bebop, rebop”– “Montage” anyone? (Despite all of Hughes’s work, and of the “progress,” particularly economic, in the South, I think we still tend to consider any cultural product (whether produced by black or white artists) that comes out of the rural, deep South as being somehow “vernacular,” more tied to “folk” traditions (especially unwritten ones) than writing or art that is produced in NYC, for example– which makes YK’s use of such stereotypes interesting, as I’m under the impression he hasn’t lived in LA for a while.)

While Komunyakaa’s invocation of Hughes is apparent (sometimes even a little too much so, even for me), I think he also bears some similarity to Heaney and Milosz. As to Heaney, I’m sure everyone was reminded of his work when reading “Landscape for the Disappeared”– is this a conscious reference to Heaney? (“Yes, peat bogs/ in Louisiana”). And actually, the sorts of images that YK invokes are quite similar to the ones I myself was musing on when I read Heaney’s account of bogs across the big pond swallowing up/preserving disposed of bodies. The notion that the landscape literally holds our, the South’s, secrets is an eery if often invoked one (Lord only knows how many bodies the swamps in LA or the rivers throughout the Delta have held– I always think of folks dragging rivers for certain unlawfully disposed of persons and finding about 5 or 6 bodies that aren’t even the ones sought after). In other words, while Heaney’s description of the bogs as graves is more fascinating then horrifying (though perhaps I’d feel differently if I lived in European environs), Komunyakaa’s is painful, spooky, and unsettling. I think the “spookiness” of YK’s account goes back to silence (not unlike that present in “Salt”), of what we refuse to talk about/acknowledge even when we all know, and maybe also to the more recent-ness of it– it’s one thing to talk about sacrificial murders from “way back when,” but it’s an entirely different matter to find bodies disposed of within the last 50 years.

YK’s similarity to Milosz, I think, is his sense of guilt (which also could be read as similar to Heaney, though like Milosz, YK’s seems a bit more intense than Heaney’s). But like his similarity to Heaney, YK’s guilt manifests itself in radically different terms. While Milosz feels guilt over leaving the site of conflict, YK tries to come to terms with placing himself in the midst of it. I’m thinking, of course, of his Vietnam poems, from his collection, “Dien Cai Dau.” I was particularly struck by “Hanoi Hannah” and “Report from the Skull’s Diorama.” I must confess that most of the accounts of black men’s roles in Vietnam that I’ve read have not been written by those who went and, instead, are arguments against going. Not only to deal with the psychological stress of war, but also to be listening to radio announcements from back home, tauntingly asking, “‘Soul Brothers, what you dying for?’” must have been nearly unmanageable. I think it’s easy for us of the post-Vietnam generation to get caught up in the rhetoric of why someone shouldn’t have gone to Vietnam and to lose those voices that went (and may not have chosen to go). YK, in “Report” especially, expresses an awareness of the injustice at work both at home and abroad, and is yet still participating in and suffering from it simultaneously– hearing about King’s assassination while napalming villages is understandably haunting, particularly with flyers circulating that state “VC didn’t kill/ Dr. Martin Luther King”– and once again, “silence” on the matter.

(On Tuesday, I also want to chat about “Changes; or, Reveries at a Window...” as it is one of my favorites– I’ve experimented with reading it in different ways and have yet to be disappointed, and I think we’ll also have to discuss the Thorn Merchant poems, though as of now, I’m not sure what to say about them that’s not completely obvious...)

Posted by: alschmidt | April 27, 2008 at 09:45 PM

 

Comments

[Jack Ayres]

Maggie provided Yusef Komunyakaa's quote about poetry being a "distilled insinuation" rather than a "full frontal assault." I found this comment surprising and intriguing, as I actually considered him one of the more blunt poets we've read this semester. I do not mean that his poems lack complexity or artfulness, but that many of them--especially his war poems--are relatively explict and direct. But, upon reflection, I wonder if I got that impression not so much from the poetry itself, but rather YK's subject matter.

Specifically, I'm referring to sex. To say that Komunyakaa is the only poet who wrote extensively about coitus would be stupid, but there seems to be an obsession with--or at least a primacy given to--sex that permeates the entire collection. This perception was perhaps aiding by the fact that I believe I caught at least two direct references to DH Lawrence, another writer famously preoccupied with sex in his work). For YK, sex seems to be a vital, animating force, perhaps the most primal motivation for all behavior (a difficult point to argue), but also a dangerous and damaging weapon.

I'd like to briefly refer to "Songs for My Father," which Maggie wrote on. Specfically, the stanza where the speaker seeks out a woman his father had sex with and also sleeps with her, saying "Yes, she cried out, / But she didn't sing your name / When I planted myself in her" (32). Also in the same stanza, YK refers to Kawabata's THOUSAND CRANES: in this novel, the young man Kikuji seeks to better understand his father by finding two of his father's mistresses, and, of the two, it is the woman he begins an affair with who enriches him and helps him to understand his father. Therefore, I agree with Maggie's analysis that YK is finding some sense of connection to his father through this, to borrow Maggie's phrase, a "shared sexuality." Slightly kinky and a bit perverse, especially if taken very literally, but still utterly relatable: coming into one's sexuality and recognizing the sexuality of others--especially our parents--can have a remarkable effect on the relationship. Just this past weekend, a friend told me about when she was about 13 or 14 and found her father's journal in the attic. Knowing she probably shouldn't read the diary, she (of course) did so anyway, and came upon passages detailing the "amazing sex" he was having with her mother while they were first dating. It was a bit disturbing for her to read at first, but upon reflection, she identified that moment as the point when she saw her parents as "people" rather than "parents."

However, sex can have a much more divisive and even destructive power in Komunyakaa's poetry. One example is "Stepfather: A Girl's Song." In the poem, the speaker tells of her stepfather, whose "eyes undressed" her, coming into her room and warning her of his strength. The poem ends:

My hands are like sparrows, stars
caught in tangled dance of branches.
He raises my clothes.
An undertow drags me down.
His mouth on mine, kissing my mother. (45)

This poem presents a radically different perspective on the "shared sexuality" between family members, although neither case is incestuous, of course. The relevant difference is that, in the first example, sexuality can be seen as a bridge between generations and a means to maturity; in the second, sex is threatening, painful, and damaging.

Finally, although I wrote on YK and sex because it struck me as his central preoccupation, I concur with Amy about taking at least some time to discuss "Changes"--a poem whose multiple possible readings are both liberating and maddening. I'd also like to pursue her discussion of YK's Vietnam poems a bit more.

PS One final note I felt compelled to mention: my mp3 player is set to random, and--amazingly--as I transitioned into writing about "Stepfather," it began playing Deadsy's "Itty Bitty Titsy Girl," a very creepy song sung from the perspective of a pedophile. Spooky~

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visit each link for the complete article text.

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