SOURCE: "'Lines of Tempered Steel': An Interview with Yusef Komunyakaa," in Callaloo, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring, 1990, pp. 215-29.

In the following interview, which took place on February 21, 1986, in Bloomington, Indiana, Komunyakaa discusses such subjects as his upbringing, his poetic influences, and the nature of poetry.

[Gotera]: Why don't we start with your background, biographical stuff, books you've written, and so on?

[Komunyakaa]: Okay. I grew up in a place called Bogalusa. That's in Louisiana, about 70 miles out of New Orleans. It's a rural kind of environment, and I think a great deal of the bucolic feeling gets into my work. If not directly, then indirectly so.

I started writing in the military. It was a different kind of writing, of course—it was journalism. That was in Vietnam, between '69 and '70. I started writing poetry in '73 in Colorado, where I lived for seven and a half years...