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Stuff I'm Currently Reading

B. P.'s bookshelf: currently-reading

by Virgil
tagged: poetry-stuff, classical-greco-roman-stuff, and currently-reading
tagged: currently-reading, un-decade-african-descent, and poetry-stuff

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So far, I write about what ever holds my attention the most stubbornly. Until the sidebar works regularly for me, The display is going to have the sidebar stuff here, then the main blog.

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Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois

My first post here is of course a Goodreads review, but one of my favorite and the only one that won't show-up on the book's entry p...

Saturday, November 30, 2024

My Goodreads review of Copacetic by Yusef Komunyakaa

 This is my proper into to this poet and more of a check on my to due list as much as anything. Hopefully I get in the mood to read more of his work some day.



Copacetic (Wesleyan New Poets)Copacetic by Yusef Komunyakaa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tangled in the bell ropes
of each new day,
scribbling on the bottom line
of someone else’s dream,
loitering
in public courtyards
telling statues where to fall.
” - from “Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror”

Yusef Komunyakaa is a poet who I knew by reputation before I ever read him. I finally read his work when I read him as part of the anthology Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and was impressed by what I read. Trying to find something to read by him was difficult, but I chose this book as it was just long-enough to serve as an introduction to him and was early-enough in his career before his more notable works on music and war (he was a Vietnam War veteran). The book was written as a homage to his Jazz heroes, and reflections on his early life in Louisiana and as a soldier abroad (though he never makes a direct reference to his time at war here).

I liked this volume generally. I didn’t have any poems I hate, but there where at least half the poems I really liked. I think the second part of the book is stronger than the first, but I think this is a good volume of early-1980s poetry. Eventually I will likely read more by him one day.

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