Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries

By Yusef Komunyakaa

Book Overview

Blue Notes offers an assortment of poet Yusef Komunyakaa's writing on contemporary poetry and music. The book is arranged in four sections. The first gathers essays on the work of poets and blues and jazz musicians influential to Komunyakaa's work, from Langston Hughes and Etheridge Knight to Ma Rainey and Thelonious Monk; the second collects a gallery of Komunyakaa's poems and the poet's commentary about each of them. The third selects interviews that reveal the development of the poet's aesthetic sensibility. The final section consists of four artistic explorations that reflect the poet's current interests. Two of of these texts, "Tenebrae" and "Buddy's Monologue," have been recently performed.
As editor Radiclani Clytus makes clear in the volume's introductory essay, although Komunyakaa's poetry has its roots in the stylistic innovations of early twentieth-century American modernists, his writing often reflects his understanding that a "black" experience should not particularize the presentation of one's art. This volume, according to the editor, is an attempt to understand Komunyakaa's critical eclecticism within the context of his own words.
Yusef Komunyakaa's books of poetry include I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Magic City, Thieves of Paradise, and Neon Vernacular, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 1994.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 047206651X
• ISBN13: 9780472066513
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Blue Notes

"Blue Notes" is useful for readers needing basic information about Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. The volume is divided into four distinct sections. One may read essays by Komunyakaa(on Etheridge Knight, Robert Hayden, and jazz musicians), commentaries he has written in response to his own work, and works that were in process as "Blue Notes" was published. In addition, the inclusion of old interviews with Komunyakaa gives readers a view of the arc of YK's aesthetic development, as well as insights into his views on the subjects of his work. The book fills a need.