Dear Yusef

In this moving tribute to Yusef Komunyakaa, friends, students, and admirers share their personal connections to the legendary poet and teacher. Contributors include luminaries like Sharon Olds, who provides an extolling acrostic of Komunyakaa’s name (“F for the Freedom of Form... O is for Omigawd, how does he do it?!”), and Terrance Hayes, who reflects on “what it means to be a Black Jazz Poet,” recalling—and charmingly apologizing for—a “mediocre review” he wrote of one of Komunyakaa’s collections in 2000. “The tiny eyes of a young poet,” Hayes writes, reflecting on his inability to fully understand Komunyakaa’s work at the time. “Icarus critiquing the wings of Daedalus.” Elsewhere, Dwayne Betts writes poignantly about discovering Komunyakaa, among other great Black poets, while serving time in prison. In “Yusef Komunyakaa’s Scenes of Vietnam and Louisiana: The Forever Crisis of Racial Terror in Dien Cai Dau (1988),” Hannah Baker Saltmarsh draws connections between Komunyakaa’s experience growing up in the Jim Crow South and the “imperialist, racialized violence in the Vietnam War,” in which he fought and wrote about in the collection Saltmarsh references. This is a well-deserved honor for Komunyakaa and a must-have for his fans. (Nov.)