{"id":36110,"date":"2006-04-21T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=36110"},"modified":"2025-02-18T11:55:25","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T19:55:25","slug":"issue-59-a-conversation-with-yusef-komunyakaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-59-a-conversation-with-yusef-komunyakaa\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 59: A Conversation with Yusef Komunyakaa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Willow<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interview in Willow Springs <\/em>59<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works in Willow Springs 23<\/em><\/a> and 21<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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April 21, 2006<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jeffrey Dodd and Jessica Moll<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Yusef<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit:\u00a0dodgepoetry.org<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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CONTRIBUTING TO A ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION<\/strong> celebrating The American Poetry Review<\/em>\u2019s 25th anniversary, Yusef Komunyakaa described a vision of American poetry: \u201cEzra Pound beside Amiri Baraka and H.D. \ufb02anking Toi Derricotte, Joy Harjo back-to-back with Frank O\u2019Hara and Garrett Hongo alongside William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens\u2014a continuum of impulses and possibilities that creates a map\u2026\u201d While modesty might prevent Komunyakaa from placing himself in this vision, abreast Mina Loy, say, or Theodore Roethke, the fact remains that his is one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary American letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cimpulses and possibilities\u201d of Komunyakaa\u2019s poetry depend upon precise imagery that points toward an essential experience, while reminding us that this experience must be grounded in external context. In his recent poem \u201cTree Ghost,\u201d the speaker moves swiftly from a discovery of \u201cthree untouched mice dead \/ along the afternoon footpath\u201d to an embrace of connection: \u201cI can almost feel \/ how the owl\u2019s beauty scared the mice \/ to death, how the shadow of her wings \/ was a god passing over the grass.\u201d How many gods shadow us daily, scaring us nearly to death with their beauty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The provocation of such questions is a major strength of Komunyakaa\u2019s work, achieved through mastery of image, rhythm, and diction marshaled on behalf of a conviction that \u201cpoetry in our complex society connects us to lyrical tension that has everything to do with discovery and the act of becoming.\u201d Poetry is not mere experimentation. That view, he says, \u201cis a kind of selling out\u2014to remain in that landscape of the abstract, when there\u2019s so much happening around us. Not that the politics of observation should be on the surface of the poem. But we want human voices that are believable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Komunyakaa has achieved this humanity in more than a dozen collections of poetry, of which Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1<\/em> is the most recent. He has been honored as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and has won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He recently joined the faculty at New York University, taking the position vacated by Galway Kinnell. After giving a public reading for Get Lit!, the annual literary festival sponsored by Eastern Washington University Press, Komunyakaa met with us at the Palm Court Grill in Spokane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JESSICA MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The slightly elongated lines in a poem you read from last night, \u201cRequiem,\u201d allow for a \ufb02ooding sensation that you can hear when the poem is read aloud. What might tip you o\ufb00 to a formal necessity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For \u201cRequiem,\u201d I think the subject matter dictated the poem\u2019s structure. I had been asked to consider writing a poem about Hurricane Katrina, and after thinking about it for a while, I said yes to the editor of Oxford American<\/em>. I said to myself, Well, I\u2019ll write the \ufb01rst part for the magazine and then continue, because now I see this as a book-length poem. I knew I wanted \u201cRequiem\u201d to have long and short lines. I wanted movement on the page, because that happens with water, that happens with chaos. And also I remembered Richard Hugo saying that the poem needs a combination of long and short lines. Years ago when I was wrestling with this concept, it took me some time to understand what Hugo meant. But he\u2019d also mentioned that he loved swing music, that he was in\ufb02uenced by swing. Long and short lines\u2014swing music\u2014it now made sense to me. He was talking about a kind of modulation that takes place, a movement that happens in music and language. I knew that \u201cRequiem\u201d was a long poem, its changes and ebbs held together by ellipses. So it\u2019s one sentence, basically, with a one-word refrain. And that one word is \u201calready.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JEFFREY DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does the role of the refrain in your work\u2014in a poem like \u201cThe Same Beat,\u201d for example\u2014\ufb01nd its roots in the musical tradition and diction and speech patterns of where you grew up, or in a broader Western poetic tradition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is associated with storytelling. How I began hearing stories. Having grown up in rural Louisiana, I remember people telling lengthy stories, and such verbal escapades were mainly paced through repetition. One can view the refrain as a call seeking a response. But also, I use the refrain, sometimes, as part of the process in composing the poem. And then I may extract the refrain from the poem. So, in this sense, one could say that the \ufb01nished poem has been driven by a false engine. Unless a refrain functions as an integral part of a poem, as an element of its natural pace and breath, it can be viewed as merely a formal gesture, as an unnecessary stroke on the emotional canvas. Of course, I\u2019m also thinking of music. After being asked to consider reading on HBO\u2019s Def Poetry Jam<\/em>, I wrote \u201cThe Same Beat,\u201d and it began with this: \u201cI don\u2019t want the same beat.\u201d There\u2019s an insistence tangled in this voice, and I think it gave me permission to pursue the poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the refrain was just a way to get you into the subject matter of the poem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. And, in that sense, that\u2019s what I mean by a false engine. However, it doesn\u2019t falsify. It helps us to get to a basic truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose there are refrains in visual art, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s right. Colors don\u2019t remain static on the canvas. There\u2019s movement. The images and the hues force the eye into the rhythm of reason. Colors create a dialogue. It depends on how we\u2019re willing to dance with a painting. How many places we\u2019re willing to stand and view it. I love visual art. Often I daydream about it, not necessarily about putting paint on canvas, but maybe about creating sculpture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In earlier interviews, you\u2019ve mentioned Romare Bearden and Giacometti and a whole list of artists who push against representational images. How does that anti-representational move work in your poetry, when your images seem uniquely representational\u2014so striking, so precise. Is there a complementary understanding between your view of visual art and written images?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think where the abstraction exists is actually in that space between images. And that space helps to create tension in a work of art. In writing or music this space often equals silence. I suppose, what we\u2019re really talking about here is a way of thinking and seeing, a way of dreaming and embracing possibility. For instance, in thinking about Picasso, it is important to note that he started out as a representational artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably because his father was a representational artist, who stopped painting after seeing early paintings by his son. Then, of course, as we know, Picasso\u2019s work takes on an abstracted dimension clearly in\ufb02uenced by West African sculpture. It\u2019s what we now call cubism. There\u2019s that story about Picasso and Apollinaire stealing a few small African statues from the Louvre. Supposedly, Apollinaire was arrested, but he refused to incriminate Picasso. The poet takes all the blame. That says something about Picasso, I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m curious about your interest in Bearden\u2014does the idea of \ufb01nding things in the world and placing them side by side to create art come into play in your writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bearden studied mathematics when he attended NYU. When he uses collage technique, it seems mathematical. So many beginning painters have attempted imitating Bearden, and it doesn\u2019t work. But if you look at his more impressionistic paintings, especially the ones painted in France\u2014if you look at those paintings beside his collages, they\u2019re very di\ufb00erent. And yet, they possess an aspect of the collage, and I think that has something to do with movement. How colors are juxtaposed against each other. He\u2019s one of my favorite American painters. Along with many others, such as Norman Lewis, an African American painting around the time of Jackson Pollock. He\u2019s rather political as well. There\u2019s a photograph of him with some other artists, protesting the lack of work by black artists exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To get back to the heart of your question, I have to say this: I like how ideas and images \ufb01t into a single frame of reference to create tension, how things can be taken from the natural world and placed in the world of the imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening to you read \u201cThe Same Beat\u201d last night, some of the lines that stood out referred to people in the music industry \u201cselling out.\u201d There was the line about a guy with a mouth full of gold\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one already bought and sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do writers confront that phenomenon at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writers do confront that phenomenon. I\u2019ve written about the erasure that takes place in some contemporary poetry through over-experimentation. That\u2019s a kind of selling out\u2014to remain in that landscape of the abstract, when there\u2019s so much happening to us and around us. Not that the politics of observation should be on the surface of the poem. But we want human voices that are believable, and that\u2019s why Walt Whitman is so interesting to me. Whitman addresses everything, and is clearly in\ufb02uenced by Italian opera, so everything reaches for a crescendo\u2014but he didn\u2019t dodge anything. He really confronts the essence of being an American. Even though there\u2019s fetishism, or, I should say, there are certain characters on his poetic canvas that become eroticized. I do think that contemporary poetry confronts a lot. If you think about the importance of someone like Ginsberg, and \u201cHowl\u201d\u2014if \u201cHowl\u201d hadn\u2019t appeared, in 1958, I hate to think where American poetry would now be. There were some brave souls to come along and confront the Fugitives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ransom and Tate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ransom and Tate. Was it Tate, who, at Vanderbilt, campaigned against Langston Hughes and his poetry? I think so. Look, we have come so far, in a way, within the last thirty or forty years. There\u2019s Tate pleading to academia, \u201cDon\u2019t recognize Hughes.\u201d
These were the Agrarians, the Southern Agrarians, but this wasn\u2019t the only camp of poetic expression that was stuck in the mud in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think the Fugitives got \u201cstuck in the mud\u201d because they confused politics for art, or confused the function of politics in art? It seems they made so many statements trying to maintain their southern regionalism in the midst of the Depression, trying to make these economic arguments for which they weren\u2019t trained at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And also, they weren\u2019t farmers either. They were removed from the realities of farm life. But they were presenting themselves as the voice of the agrarians, though they didn\u2019t understand the machinery of economics. They did, however, understand the politics of culture and race in America, as well as the divide and conquer stratagem. The Fugitives had to know that language is political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They seemed to underestimate the power of capitalism, even during the Depression, when nobody had anything. They seemed to misunderstand how powerful the popular response to capitalism would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t want to deal with a critique of the social realities of the time. And Hughes\u2019s work attempted to criticize the hierarchies of power. The Agrarians didn\u2019t want to face themselves in the mirror, basically, because they were a part of the structure that had systematically bene\ufb01ted from privilege. So it\u2019s interesting that we would have poets who refused to give voice to an individual because of the color of his skin, and also because of his politics, his audacity to confront the beast that hurled hardship onto the backs of his brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that Robert Penn Warren was the only one who even made an e\ufb00ort to re-evaluate his position in that social reality, moving into the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Penn Warren was di\ufb00erent. I was probably nineteen or twenty when I \ufb01rst read Promises<\/em>. Penn Warren seems to have had an ongoing dialogue with Ralph Ellison, and I don\u2019t know if the bulk of that has been published or recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were a couple of interviews, one in which Ellison interviewed Warren for The Paris Review<\/em>, and one in which Warren interviewed Ellison for Warren\u2019s 1965 book, Who Speaks for the Negro<\/em>? But they\u2019re ambivalent interactions, as though Ellison doesn\u2019t quite trust that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warren isn\u2019t simply an unreconstructed southerner, a suspicion that he\u2019s making these e\ufb00orts to rehabilitate his reputation. And it seems as though there\u2019s no way to prove the sincerity of his re-evaluation of his early views. He spent his whole life writing against his segregationist essay, \u201cThe Briar Patch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did he even enter that dialogue\u2014because he\u2019s younger than Tate and Ransom. And, of course, after being beckoned to the Fugitives, he tried to distance himself from that movement and its agenda. But he\u2019d already been implicated. He couldn\u2019t outrun \u201cHere we take our stand,\u201d that line from \u201cDixie.\u201d I would\u2019ve loved overhearing those discussions between Warren and Ellison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last night you talked about how you see silence as part of the emotional music of Samuel Beckett\u2019s work. Does the silence in music and drama work the same way in poetry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it works slightly di\ufb00erently in poetry, because the silence begs for an abbreviated meditation to take place. And I don\u2019t know if that happens, especially, in music. It de\ufb01nitely occurs in drama, where silence is an intricate part of the narrative. In that sense, silence is dramatic. In poetry, since the reader is sitting there with the page, and even in a reading by the poet it can take place\u2014a silence\u2014because of stanza breaks. So, I view silence in the poem as a moment of meditation. I think someone said that there should be space enough to \ufb01t one\u2019s heart into. That resonates with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough space for the reader to become fully invested in the action on the page?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poetry is an action. It relies on the image, on the music in each line. Perhaps that\u2019s why the reader usually refuses to embrace statement in poetry as readily as in prose. There\u2019s an active investment, and that\u2019s why a poem can have multiple meanings. The meaning is shaped by what an individual brings to the poem. A poem isn\u2019t an ad for an emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re composing, and you decide how to put the words on the page visually, do you hear the silence as much as you hear the music of the words?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hear the silence because I read everything aloud as I compose the poem. The ear is a great editor. I hear the silence in the music of language. Not exaggerated, but as a part of the natural continuity of process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was the \ufb01rst poet you learned that from, to hear the music as well as the silence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose when I \ufb01rst began to think about it, I was reading Emily Dickinson. There\u2019s so much silence in her work. But I don\u2019t believe it is a silence that erases content. In fact, in her poetry, it seems to inform content. I was interested in what wasn\u2019t being said as much as in what was being said. Her poetry always makes my mind very active, as if I\u2019m attempting to seek a dialogue with the unknown or the unknowable. This is entirely di\ufb00erent from Whitman, although as a poet I embrace Whitman more, with his long lines. And again, the length of the lines, the long lines, seems to beg meditation as opposed to the vertical trajectory of short lines. For the most part, I embrace the short line, and maybe that has something to do with contemporary time, the way everything seems sped up. There\u2019s a kind of vertical plunge of the poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does writing plays, with its importance on setting up a dramatic scene and moving the narrative forward, inform your poetry? Are you learning new things from working in another genre?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not really. I think maybe I\u2019m bringing something from poetry over to drama. I realized that poetry could be an ally in my \ufb01rst play, Gilgamesh<\/em>, which is an adaptation I wrote for the stage. It is primarily a verse play, with limited moments of silence. Of course, it would depend on the director, whether he or she wishes to introduce certain silences. In the play I\u2019m working on now, called The Deacons<\/em>, there are numerous places for silence\u2014matter of fact, I express it there in the notes: \u201cPause\u201d or \u201cSilence.\u201d Each piece, whether poem or play, is propelled by its own language and music because the speakers are di\ufb00erent in their unique physical and emotional landscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the process of collaboration enliven a project, open new doors, or ask you to look at your work in new ways?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I welcome the perspective, the energy. In that way, it\u2019s almost like an ensemble. We begin, and from the outset, we are trying to visualize where the process is going to take us. But it\u2019s always most interesting to see what happens in between, in that space where surprises occur. I trust my collaborators. Otherwise I wouldn\u2019t do it. I\u2019m hoping that these kinds of collaborations are going to happen again and again, that poets are going to start writing for the theater, where language is going to again inform plot. Because the stage seems to have been adversely in\ufb02uenced by television and the movie industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By focusing on plot at the expense of the work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And usually it\u2019s a sped-up plot: one collision after another, one mindless chase after another, one bloody scene after another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every time you come out with a book or project, it feels as if you\u2019ve found something new. How do you keep challenging yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it has to do with growing up in a small town, Bogalusa, Louisiana, where there was always an embracing of something, and in that same moment a moving away. Whatever it was\u2014dealing with it, going through it, attempting to move past it, and then realizing that everything\u2019s connected. We humans possess this great capacity. The human brain is amazing. But it is also gluttonous. That is, it seems willing to almost embrace anything and everything. Perhaps that has a lot to do with how we have evolved and survived as a species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOLL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a pretty optimistic view. A lot of people talk about the narrowing of the human mind, with TV and media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with turning on the TV is that one has too many simpli\ufb01ed choices. A glut of ball games, comedy shows, soap operas, whatever distraction is on at the moment. The typical American city is a universe of cultivated distractions. But at the same time, there are probably a couple poetry readings in session in the vicinity. Also, maybe a few individuals are trying to write that \ufb01rst line of poetry, or that refrain as a false engine. And not only in America, though I do think the United States is a healthy place for poetry and other artistic pursuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Has it gotten better? In your interview with Vince Gotera back in 1990, you said that the U.S. is a healthy place for poetry, but at the same time\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a similarity. But also there are some unique voices that pop out. However, I was thinking this morning about the phrase, \u201cbetween then and now,\u201d and I wanted to place certain poets beneath that phrase. Certain voices. Tonally, each of these voices seems to exist in his or her own world, and yet there\u2019s a shared personality. They\u2019re later than the Modernists. There were a number of names \ufb02oating around in my head. This thought came to me early this morning. I was thinking of W.S. Merwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Adrienne Rich, Galway Kinnell, James Wright, Alan Dugan, Robert Bly, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Etheridge Knight, and Donald Hall. These voices. I think this body of work forms a collective voice that\u2019s uniquely North American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve written several articles about Hayden and Etheridge Knight. I don\u2019t think Knight\u2019s poetry is celebrated as much as it ought to be, and I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the politics of his personal life or what\u2019s there on the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For young poets who aren\u2019t acquainted with Etheridge\u2019s poetry, it is always an engaging surprise for them. He speaks directly to their concerns, without any embellishment or fa\u00e7ades. It\u2019s also interesting to think about some of the abovementioned poets who directly embraced Etheridge in friendship, such as Brooks, Bly, Kinnell, and Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of whom were doing interesting things on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. So they felt safe, I think, embracing this man, this poet whose work was di\ufb00erent, his personal life entirely di\ufb00erent from theirs. They seem not to have been threatened by him. In that sense, this re\ufb02ects the spirit of the Civil Rights movement, because that movement was truly an American experience accelerated mainly by blacks and whites. Of course, many from di\ufb00erent minority groups, especially ones who arrived after those turbulent years, have bene\ufb01ted directly and indirectly from the movement. For many, this is a bone of contention. We only have to look at those thousands of photographs as a reminder of recent history. Just think about those eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds boarding those buses in the Midwest, heading for the Deep South on a freedom ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was teaching at Indiana University, I used to ask students to look at the photographs of those nineteen-year-olds going south. I said, \u201cWhere do you place yourself in this equation? Can you visualize yourself doing this?\u201d Many couldn\u2019t, you know, coming from very safe situations. They couldn\u2019t see themselves stepping forward to help implement change in America. And that sense of change in\ufb02uenced the rest of the world, really. In Australia, I was talking with some aboriginal writers about a decade ago, and they said, \u201cYes, the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s in\ufb02uenced the idea of change in Australia.\u201d This is true throughout the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And at the same time, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, there was a concerted e\ufb00ort to undermine what happened during the movement. That should be analyzed, our need to turn back the clock to the so-called good old days. Do we need to hold a national s\u00e9ance to raise the dead in order to know the meaning of the good old days? I know I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But many helped to prompt some change, and we as Americans should embrace that recent moment in our history instead of agonizing about it. Because I hate to think about our situation here if the Civil Rights movement had not happened. Indeed, many of those post-Modernist poets were in the bloody mire and sway of the movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember assigning students to write about the photographs depicting those nineteen-year-olds getting on those buses, you know. Some of those protesters are still in our towns and cities. The Civil Rights monument in Birmingham is dedicated to their heroic e\ufb00orts. But I think our poetry is also robust enough to embrace that moment in our history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DODD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we began by asking you about \u201cRequiem,\u201d how do you envision New Orleans ten years from now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KOMUNYAKAA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hate to think of that tragedy being parlayed into a real estate project, but given that it\u2019s in the United States, most likely the Ninth Ward is going to become a boom area for developers. However, we have to keep the horror of Katrina in our conscience, in our psyche, and we have to make decisions based on that awareness. For years, whenever I went back to New Orleans, I thought, \u201cI\u2019m going to move back here. I\u2019m going to have an apartment here.\u201d That\u2019s the furthest thing from my mind at this moment, because I don\u2019t want to participate in that evil at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, let\u2019s face it, New Orleans is really a composite of cultures. Of course, that is its uniqueness. The Crescent City was where suburbanites would venture to escape from themselves and do things they wouldn\u2019t do in their own neighborhoods and hometowns. New Orleans was Saturnalia, a place of ancient rituals of harvest and feast. It was one of those places where people probably scared themselves: \u201cMy gosh, I\u2019m alive.\u201d We can\u2019t stretch a suburban attitude like gauze over the Big Easy and expect to have the same place. Why did this happen to our most African-in\ufb02uenced city, our Double Scorpio?<\/p>\n\n

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CONTRIBUTING TO A ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION celebrating The American Poetry Review\u2019s 25th anniversary, Yusef Komunyakaa described a vision of American poetry: \u201cEzra Pound beside Amiri Baraka and H.D. \ufb02anking Toi Derricotte, Joy Harjo back-to-back with Frank O\u2019Hara and Garrett Hongo alongside William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens\u2014a continuum of impulses and possibilities that creates a map\u2026\u201d While … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36722,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36110\/revisions\/36722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}