Yusef Komunyakaa and the Ampersand

&&&&&&&&&&&&& I just bought Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, to get a lot of this Pulitzer winner's poetry in a large quantity at once. Komunyakaa's range of talent commands respect and invites careful reading. Not too long ago I watched his UC Berkeley lecture, thanks to Youtube, and I was entranced. The same hypnotizing power is present in Neon Vernacular, which I am reading alongside Derek Walcott and Al Young, to discover the different techniques these poets use. One outstanding feature of Komunyakaa's collection so far, which to some might appear pedantic, is the use of the ampersand to replace 'and'. Supposed to make the conjunction invisible, it is achieving the opposite effect: the ampersand is visible and it forces me to linger near the phrases or clauses it joins to feel something. I call it the inviting, if not enticing or provocative, ampersand: &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&.

This summer I want to acquaint myself fully with three key black poets: Al Young, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Derek Walcott.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FREEDOM, a poem on South Africa by Afzal Moolla

Freedom The shackles have been cast off. Chains broken. People once squashed, under the jackboot of Apartheid, are free. Free at last! Freedom came on the 27th day in that April, 1994. Freedom from prejudice. From institutionalised racism. From being relegated to second-class citizenship. Freedom came and we danced. We cried. We ululated as we elected our revered Mandela. President Nelson Mandela. Our very own beloved 'Madiba'. Black and white and brown and those in-between, All hues of this rainbow nation, rejoiced as we breathed in the air of freedom and democracy. Today we pause. We remember. We salute. The brave ones whose sacrifices made this day possible, on that 27th day of April, 18 years ago. Today we dance. We sing. We ululate. We cry. Tears of joy and tears of loss. Of remembrance and of forgiveness. Of reconciliation and of memories. Today we pause. We acknowledge the tasks ahead. The hungry. The naked. The destitut...
Read more

Importance of African Languages in African Literature

Once in a while, I check  the search engines terms that are driving the most traffic to my blog, Wealth of Ideas, and the searches are often revealing of what kinds of information people are looking for  at any time. Today, of the several interesting ones,  "the importance of African languages in African literature" stood out. It's a topic I too am passionate about. I have written about it before in a post entitled " Language in African Literature ", but even this doesn't begin to cover the most important facts about the issue. Perhaps one day I will write treatise on the topic of language in African literature, and mini posts like this are my way of mapping a project description. But now let's go to some serious stuff on African languages in African Literature. Let me start by saying that I am annoyed by glossaries. Their intent seems to be to appeal to a foreign audience, or, most importantly, to any speakers for whom the glossaried language is for...
Read more

Abuja Writers' Forum Call for Submissions

Wordsbody has announced the following call for submissions: CAVALCADE literary journal, devoted to publishing original stories, poems,one-act plays, reviews, critical essays and art from an African perspective,will debut in October 2008 with a special edition. The tri-annual journal, a project of the Abuja Writers' Forum (AWF), is now seeking submissions for the second and third editions. Deadline: October 30, 2008 See more details here: Contribute to Cavalcade.
Read more