SOURCE: "What the Center Holds," in The Hudson Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp. 741-50.

[In the following excerpt, Gwynn discusses Komunyakaa's focus on jazz, Vietnam, family, and Louisiana in Neon Vernacular.]

Yusef Komunyakaa is a poet whose work I have known mostly through anthology pieces, one of which, the beautiful "Facing It," is the most poignant elegy that has been written about the Vietnam War. The "it," of course, is the Wall:

      A white vet's image floats
      closer to me, then his pale eyes
      look through mine. I'm a window.
      He's lost his right arm
      inside the stone. In the black mirror
      a woman's trying to erase names:
      No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

It is a pleasure to have Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems in hand, a collection that gathers together poems from small press publications with those of three of Komunyakaa's books from Wesleyan...