Yusef Komunyakaa began publishing his poetry during the turbulent 1960s, a period that included what has been called the Second New Negro Movement, suggesting the fervor that characterized the Harlem Renaissance. His early verse appeared in such periodicals as Black American Literature Forum, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Chameleon, Colorado Quarterly, Free Lance, and Poetry Now. Some of his Vietnam verse has been collected in Carrying the Darkness, an anthology edited by W.D. Ehrhart, and in The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets. Most of his poems that were published in journals are reprinted, some in altered versions, in his first full-length book, Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979).

Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, on 29 April 1947, Yusef Komunyakaa attended public school there, graduating from Central High School in 1965. Immediately thereafter he entered the U.S.Army, doing a tour in Vietnam, for which he earned the Bronze Star and during...