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Yusef
Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1947.
His eleven books of poems include 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 (1994),
for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley
Tufts Poetry Award; Magic City (1992); Dien
Cai Dau (1988), which won The Dark Room Poetry Prize;
I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), winner
of the San Francisco Poetry Center Award; and Copacetic
(1984). He also co-edited The Jazz Poetry Anthology
(with J. A. Sascha Feinstein, 1991) and co-translated
The Insomnia of Fire by Nguyen Quang Thieu (with
Martha Collins, 1995). His honors include the William
Faulkner Prize from the Universite de Rennes, the Thomas
Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, fellowships from
the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana
Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts,
and the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, where
he served as a correspondent and managing editor of
the Southern Cross. In 1999 he was elected a Chancellor
of The Academy of American Poets. Yusef Komunyakaa is
a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative
Writing Program at Princeton University. Yusef
Komunyakaa’s most recent books include Pleasure Dome:
New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press,
2001), a newly published volume of poems, Talking
Dirty to the Gods (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2000)
and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
for poetry and Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews and
Commentaries (University of Michigan Press, 2000).
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