Cover
title | : | Neon Vernacular : New and Selected Poems |
author | : | Komunyakaa, Yusef. |
publisher | : | Wesleyan University Press |
isbn10 | asin | : | 0819512117 |
print isbn13 | : | 9780819512116 |
ebook isbn13 | : | 9780585381718 |
language | : | English |
subject | American poetry. |
publication date | : | 1993 |
lcc | : | PS3561.O455N46 1993eb |
ddc | : | 811/.54 |
subject | : | American poetry. |
Page i
Neon Vernacular
Page ii
YUSEF
KOMUNYAKAA
Page iii
Neon
Vernacular
NEW AND
SELECTED POEMS
Page iv
Wesleyan University Press
Published by University Press of
New England, Hanover, NH 03755
Copyright 1993 by Yusef Komunyakaa
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7
CIP data appear at the end of the book
The "New Poems" appeared in the following
magazines: Callaloo, Indiana Arts, The Iowa Review,
The Kenyon Review, The Louisville Review,
Mid-American Review, Ploughshares, Red Dirt,
River Styx, and The Southern Review.
Dedications & Other Darkhorses, Rocky Mountain
Creative Arts Journal, 1977; included by
permission. Lost in the Bonewheel Factory,
Lynx House Press, 1979; included by permission.
Copacetic, Wesleyan University Press, 1984;
included by permission. Toys in a Field,
Black River Press, 1986; included by permission.
I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, Wesleyan
University Press, 1986; included by
permission. Dien Cai Dau, Wesleyan University
Press, 1988; included by permission.
February in Sydney, Matchbooks, 1989;
included by permission.
Page v
In memory of my grandmother, Mary,
and my father, J.W.
Page vi
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Page vii
Contents
New Poems |
Fog Galleon | |
At the Screen Door | |
Moonshine | |
Salt | |
Changes; or, Reveries at a Window Overlooking a Country Road, with Two Women Talking Blues in the Kitchen | |
Work | |
Praising Dark Places | |
A Good Memory | |
Birds on a Powerline | |
Fever | |
Little Man Around the House | |
Songs for My Father | |
from Dedications & Other Darkhorses |
The Tongue Is | |
Chair Gallows | |
Translating Footsteps | |
from Lost in the Bonewheel Factory |
Looking a Mad Dog Dead in the Eyes | |
1938 | |
Stepfather: A Girl's Song | |
Apprenticeship | |
Light on the Subject | |
Beg Song | |
Passions | |
The Dog Act | |
For You, Sweetheart, I'll Sell Plutonium Reactors | |
Page viii
The Nazi Doll | |
Corrigenda | |
from Copacetic |
False Leads | |
Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror | |
The Way the Cards Fall | |
Annabelle | |
Faith Healer | |
More Girl Than Boy | |
April Fools' Day | |
Untitled Blues | |
Back Then | |
Blasphemy | |
Safe Subjects | |
Black String of Days | |
Villon / Leadbelly | |
Elegy for Thelonious | |
Copacetic Mingus | |
Letter to Bob Kaufman | |
Woman, I Got the Blues | |
Newport Beach, 1979 | |
Gloria's Clues | |
Charmed | |
The Cage Walker | |
Addendum | |
Epilogue to the Opera of Dead on Arrival | |
Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival | |
from I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head |
Unnatural State of the Unicorn | |
Touch-up Man | |
How I See Things | |
The Thorn Merchant | |
The Thorn Merchant's Right-Hand Man | |
The Heart's Graveyard Shift | |
Boy Wearing a Dead Man's Clothes | |
The Music That Hurts | |
When in RomeApologia | |
The Thorn Merchant's Wife | |
The Thorn Merchant's Mistress | |
After Summer Fell Apart | |
Page ix
The Brain to the Heart | |
Audacity of the Lower Gods | |
The Falling-Down Song | |
The Thorn Merchant's Son | |
I Apologize | |
1984 | |
Dreambook Bestiary | |
Jonestown: More Eyes for Jadwiga's Dream | |
Landscape for the Disappeared | |
Good Joe | |
In the Background of Silence | |
For the Walking Dead | |
Child's Play | |
The Beast & Burden: Seven Improvisations | |
from Toys in a Field |
Ambush | |
Monsoon Season | |
Water Buffalo | |
Le Xuan, Beautiful Spring | |
Please | |
from Dien Cai Dau |
Camouflaging the Chimera | |
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