Quotes by Yusef Komunyakaa - Page 1

I said that love heals from inside.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Heal
Love Heals
Said
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I am this space my body believes in.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Space
Believe
Body
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I think of language as our first music.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Firsts
Language
Thinking
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Tonight I feel the stars are out to use me for target practice.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Practice
Stars
Target
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I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Focus
Poet
Uncomfortable
Poem
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I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Hope
Dark
Light
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We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Embrace
Projects
Project
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Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Caretakers
Language
Matter
Poet
Poets
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Whoever said men hit harder when women are around, is right. Word for word, we beat the love out of each other.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Men
Beats
Said
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Through the years I have seen myself as a peaceful person, but the awareness of the anger is part of that process.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Anger
Awareness
Peaceful
Process
Years
Person
Seen
Through
Part
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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 / Poet
Addiction
Decision
Deliberate
Language
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It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Vietnam
Way
Writing
Years
Me Way Never
Systematically
Took
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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 / Poet
Men
Boys
Eye
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I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Abyss
Black
Destructive
Frightening
Grasping
Males
Practice
Psychics
Thread
Practices
Psychic
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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 / Poet
Buried
Moving
Periods
Silence
Slavery
Time History Look
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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 / Poet
Dream
Hook
Light
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I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Dialogue
Human Voice
Lakes
Player
Voice
Oliver
Sax
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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 / Poet
Abstract
Believe
Concrete
Connecting
Past
Reader
Tension
Trying
Believe Past I Believe
Believe I Believe Past
Enter
Listener
Participant
Poem
Resolving
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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 / Poet
Embrace
Needs
Order
Taught
Who I Am
Poetry World Me
Above
Helps
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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 / Poet
Ideas
Talking
Way
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I think of my poems as personal and public at the same time. You could say they serve as psychological overlays. One fits on top of the other, and hopefully there's an ongoing evolution of clarity.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Clarity
Evolution
Ongoing
Psychological
Thinking
Fits
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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 / Poet
Space
White
Writing
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Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Aim
Gun
Heart
People
Terror
Traps
Vietnam
Me Look People
Guns
Hearts
Helped
Impersonal
Realize
Spoken
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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 / Poet
Carpenter
Father
Files
Great Grandfather
Hammers
Precision
Rulers
Tools
Dealt
Eliminated
Work Value Me
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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 / Poet
Be Prepared
Ideas
Important
Important Things
Lofty
Prepared
Shapes
Classical
Edit
Poem
Revise
Shape
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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 / Poet
Believe
Thinking
White
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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 / Poet
Celebration
Confrontation
Daring
Discovering
Energetic
Existential
Kind
Questioning
Risk
Witness
Define
Perhaps
Question
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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 / Poet
Anger
Believe
Commercialization
Embrace
Imagery
Irresponsible
Rap
Rap Music
Responsibility
Dynamic
Originally
Voices
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Cursing themselves in ragged dreamsfire has singed the edges of,they know a slow dying the fields have come to terms with.Shimmering fans work against the heat& smell of gunpowder, making moneyfloat from hand to hand. The next momenta rocket pushes a white fistthrough night sky, & they scatter like birds& fall into the shape their liveshave become.
Yusef Komunyakaa / Poet
Fall
Night
White
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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 / Poet
Artist
Lonely
Thinking
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Yusef Komunyakaa Quotes - Page 1

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