{"id":478,"date":"2008-12-06T05:21:19","date_gmt":"2008-12-06T00:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angelafardo.com\/?p=478"},"modified":"2010-08-30T02:25:46","modified_gmt":"2010-08-29T21:25:46","slug":"yusef-komunyakaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/?p=478","title":{"rendered":"Yusef Komunyakaa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A native of Bogalusa Louisiana, Yusef Komunyakaa won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1994 for his collection entitled <em>Neon Vernacular<\/em>.\u00a0 You can take a look at a preview of Neon Vernacular by clicking <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=1nclTH1WxScC&amp;hl=en\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 His poetry is like written literary jazz with a razor&#8217;s edge.\u00a0 <!--more-->I guess for some reason I feel closer to him through the bricks his father laboured over and his southern stylings.\u00a0 You see both of my grandfather&#8217;s worked in brick factories in Eastern Kentucky and as a child I could still see the etched lines in their hands from the hard labor they endured.\u00a0 For a quick sample, you can listen to a recitation of My Father&#8217;s Love Letters by clicking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/15928\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Komunyakaa also draws incredible life experience from his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War.\u00a0 His first hand accounts of the sites and sounds of Vietnam garner him a unique voice to reflect on the harsh realities of war.\u00a0 He truly is one of our greatest living poets.\u00a0 My favorite poem of his entitled &#8220;Tunnels&#8221; is an absolute triumph of imagery that tells of the Tunnel Rat in his platoon but in essence also portrays the grit, grim determination and pestilence that plague an individual at war.\u00a0 He uses underground imagery that twists and turns you in it&#8217;s grasp. You feel as if you are down there with him in the dark.\u00a0 If you are into poetry at all, I highly recommend picking it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A native of Bogalusa Louisiana, Yusef Komunyakaa won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1994 for his collection entitled Neon Vernacular.\u00a0 You can take a look at a preview of Neon Vernacular by clicking here.\u00a0 His poetry is like written literary jazz with a razor&#8217;s edge.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[125],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelafardo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}