Yusef Komunyakaa's books of poems include Warhorses (FSG, 2008), Taboo (FSG, 2004), and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at New York University.
"The Chameleon Couch proves itself an expertly crafted book from a
poet peaking in his awareness and execution of all the tangled
dialectics that manifest in his art, but also refuses to define, or
divine like a prophet burned too many times by past certainty, what
awaits us or any of our chosen chameleons or ghosts other than the
ones we already know, which in Komunyakaa's hands, resonate
perfectly across the wide swath of history." --Paul Corman-Roberts,
The Rumpus "This 14th collection from Komunyakaa does not wear its
ostensible subject-how to continually reinvent life when the past
constantly wells up within the present-on its sleeve. But over the
course of these poems, Komunyakaa revisits his shared love of jazz
with the poet William Matthews, an earlier ease with multiple
lovers (back when it was easy to be/ at least two places at once),
an impossible-to-forget era where a black boy or girl sent to the
grocery store... / could disappear between a laugh &/ a cry,
and, in a poem of the same title, A Voice on an Answering Machine
that belongs to someone dead (who lives between the Vale of Kashmir
& nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky). The ease and lack of defensive
ornament allow a new kind of autobiographical poem to emerge, a
daybook-like chronicle of what it is to have the freedom in later
life to remake oneself moment by moment, while accommodating all
that one has done, and those one has loved, before. The last poem,
Ontology and Guinness is at once a joyous celebration of Obama's
election and an effortlessly self-elegizing cenotaph. That the
poem, which also sings the praises of a certain stout, holds
together at all is a testament to its maker's will and invisible
skill." --Publishers Weekly
"Komunyakaa, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1993 Neon
Vernacular, writes poetry that confronts the dark places of both
national and personal history ... The mix of violence and intimacy
is sure to haunt the reader ... yet a persistent hope in the
possibility of healing exists throughout the book ... Here hedonism
is reimagined; music and love are valuable not because they offer
escape, but because they contain the possibility of healing."
--Elizabeth Hoover, The Dallas Morning News "In The Chameleon
Couch, Yusef Komunyakaa toys with character and voice with the
shape-shifting skill of a best-selling novelist working under
several pseudonyms. Through first-person narration, he tells enough
stories to fill a hopping dance floor: a fine lady, an aging man, a
territorial ghost, a street urchin, an occasional drag queen ...
Like most forms of fiction, the characters of The Chameleon Couch
provide distractions from a painful past, from memories that
threaten to pierce the pageantry with intense sorrow ... The
reverence and gravity of so many of the poems in this collection
can be overwhelming for a light-hearted reader, but the author uses
love to buoy the spirits. Love runs defiantly through nearly every
poem ... The closing lines of the collection achieve artful
dignity, and a hard-earned smile: 'The older I get / the quicker
Christmas comes, / but if I had to give up the heavenly/taste of
Guinness dark, I couldn't / live another goddamn day. Darling, /
you can chisel that into my headstone.'" --Julie Dill, St. Louis
Magazine "In Yusef Komunyakaa's latest, The Chameleon Couch, the
Pulitzer Prize-winner seamlessly blends the ancient and the modern
. . . and the mythic and the personal . . . His winding lines and
abundant use of ampersands recall Allen Ginsberg's jazzy riffs, and
his bold proclamations ('Tell your inheritors to think of me / when
they smile up at the sky') are impressively Whitman-esque."
--Carmela Ciuraru, Newsday "Anyone may come to Yusef Komunyakaa's
poetry, but only the most hard-skinned remain unmoved. His verse
smolders with checked energy ... He is a poet of great magnitude
and The Chameleon Couch sees the scope of his poetic interests and
intersections widening." --Levi Rubeck, Bomblog "Known for musical
references and remarkable imagery, the Pulitzer Prize winner mixes
worlds freely. Memory is stirred up and ghosts engaged, from
Minerva to Monk. Indictments are handed out in a measured way and
balanced with adulation. Rope and catgut are bookends. The scales
demand a 'pinch of salt for a pinch of sugar.'
More than a witness, Komunyakaa navigates between poles: between
crime and faith, cages and paradise, love and reason. He confronts
despots and turns thunder into nourishing rain. A romantic muse
slips by on winged feet . . .
'Flesh' is a hundred-line poem of ten stanzas that tackles the
'ultimate question.' Komunyakaa rips his discourse out of the void
as he steals the voices of gulls from the 'creator's ... mouth.'
Challenging the hurt while following desire, the poet initiates a
sacrificial act as he becomes his 'own communion.'
If the idea is to make the word flesh, then Komunyakaa comes damned
close. The lion masters the lyre." --Jeffrey Cyphers White, The
Brooklyn Rail "Komunyakaa puts his thoughts and images together
with the utmost restraint; this is intricately conversation poetry
devoid of exclamation marks or shouting . . . These are poems that
emerge from a mythical core and yet sound magically contemporary."
--Alex M. Frankel, The Antioch Review
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