Yusef Komunyakaa was born on April 29, 1947, in Bogalusa, Louisiana, where he was raised during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. His first book of poems,
Dedications & Other Darkhorses (R. M. C. A. J. Books), was published in 1977, followed by
Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (Lynx House Press) in 1979. Komunyakaa first received wide recognition following the 1984 publication of
Copacetic (Wesleyan University Press), a collection of poems built from colloquial speech which demonstrated his incorporation of jazz influences. He followed the book with two others:
I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (Wesleyan University Press, 1986), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Award; and
Dien Cai Dau (Wesleyan University Press, 1988), which won The Dark Room Poetry Prize and has been cited by poets, such as William Matthews and Robert Hass, as being among the best writing on the war in Vietnam. Since then, Komunyakaa has published numerous books of poems, including
Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026), a collaboration with Laren McClung;
The Emperor of Water Clocks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015);
Thieves of Paradise (Wesleyan University Press, 1998), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award;
Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977–1989 (Wesleyan University Press, 1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and
Magic City (Wesleyan University Press, 1992). (
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