SOURCE: "Staying Human," in Parnassus, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1993–94, pp. 126-50.

In the following essay, Collins provides an overview of Komunyakaa's career.

"I went to Vietnam as a basic naive young man of eighteen. Before I reached my nineteenth birthday, I was an animal…. They prepared us for Vietnam as a group of individuals who worked together as a unit to annihilate whatever enemy we came upon … There was this saying: 'Yeah though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, 'cause I'm the baddest motherfucker in the valley' … I collected about 14 ears and fingers. With them strung on a piece of leather around my neck, I would go downtown, and you would get free drugs, free booze, free pussy because they wouldn't wanna bother you 'cause this man's a killer. It symbolized that I'm a killer. And it was, so to speak, a symbol of...