Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa (born James William Brown Jr.; April 29, 1941 or 1947 ) is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2001. Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his contribution to poetry.

His subject matters include the Black experience, rural Southern life before the civil rights movement, and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.

Early life and education Komunyakaa was born in 1947 and given the name James William Brown Junior (although his former wife said in her memoir that he was born in 1941).

Komunyakaa served in the U.S. Army, serving one tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. According to his former wife, Mandy Sayer, he was discharged on 14 December 1966.

Education After his service, he attended college at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where he was an editor for and contributor to the campus arts and literature publication riverrun. He began to write poetry in 1973 and took the name Yusef Komunyakaa. He earned his M.A. in writing from Colorado State University in 1978, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, in 1980.

Teaching career After receiving his M.F.A., Komunyakaa began teaching poetry in the New Orleans public school system and teaching creative writing at the University of New Orleans.

In 1985, he was hired as an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington. Komunyakaa taught there through 1996. Yusef Komunyakaa is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

His 1993 book Neon Vernacular won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In spring 2008, New York's 92nd Street Y staged a one-night reading directed by Robert Scanlon. In May 2013 it received a full production by the Constellation Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.

His 2011 book The Chameleon Couch was a finalist for the 2012 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Personal life Komunyakaa married Australian novelist Mandy Sayer in 1985. He and Sayer were married for ten years and have a daughter.

Komunyakaa later had a relationship with India-born poet Reetika Vazirani, with whom he had a child. Vazirani died in a murder-suicide, killing their son Jehan and herself in 2003; he was two years old.

Style and influences In a 2018 interview, Komunyakaa compared his work to that of a painter or carpenter. He also stated that he finds his poetic work more violent than journalism and that it is a violence like that of the natural world.

In another interview, Komunyakaa described the biblical influences in his work. He recalled reading the Bible in his youth and discovering its underlying poetic elements. Komunyakaa also mentions early influences such as Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Phillis Wheatley.