Yusef Komunyakaa Biography

Award-winning poet and lecturer Yusef Komunyakaa is well-known for his personal poetry concerning race, the Vietnam War, jazz, and the blues. His numerous collections of poetry include Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems 1975-1999, Talking Dirty to the Gods, Thieves of Paradise, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Magic City, Dien Cai Dau, which won The Dark The collection of Komunyakaa's writings known as Blues Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries. Along with J. A. Sascha Feinstein, Yusef also co-edited The Jazz Poetry Anthology and co-translated Nguyen Quang Thieu's The Insomnia of Fire (with Martha Collins). His awards and recognitions include the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize from the University of Rennes, fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, where he worked as a correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross. He also received the Bronze Star for his military service. He was chosen to be a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999.

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