Blue Notes: ; Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries

Komunyakaa, Yusef & Radiclani Clytus

ISBN 10: 047206651X / ISBN 13: 9780472066513

Published by University of Michigan Press, 2000

About this Item

Stiff crisp book, about new but for one faintly highlighted sentence.; 8.0 X 5.4 X 0.5 inches; 176 pages.

Seller Inventory # 61185

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Blue Notes: ; Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 047206651X
• ISBN 13: 9780472066513
• Binding: Softcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literary Criticism
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

Blue Notes offers an assortment of poet Yusef Komunyakaa's writing on contemporary poetry and music. The book is arranged in four sections. The first gathers essays on the work of poets and blues and jazz musicians influential to Komunyakaa's work, from Langston Hughes and Etheridge Knight to Ma Rainey and Thelonious Monk; the second collects a gallery of Komunyakaa's poems and the poet's commentary about each of them. The third selects interviews that reveal the development of the poet's aesthetic sensibility. The final section consists of four artistic explorations that reflect the poet's current interests. Two of of these texts, "Tenebrae" and "Buddy's Monologue," have been recently performed.
As editor Radiclani Clytus makes clear in the volume's introductory essay, although Komunyakaa's poetry has its roots in the stylistic innovations of early twentieth-century American modernists, his writing often reflects his understanding that a "black" experience should not particularize the presentation of one's art. This volume, according to the editor, is an attempt to understand Komunyakaa's critical eclecticism within the context of his own words.
Yusef Komunyakaa's books of poetry include I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Magic City, Thieves of Paradise, and Neon Vernacular, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 1994.

About the Author

Yusef Komunyakaa's books of poetry include I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Magic City, Thieves of Paradise, and Neon Vernacular, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 1994.