SOURCE: A review of Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, in The Progressive, Vol. 58, No. 5, May, 1994, p. 50.

[In the following excerpt, Ness remarks on the themes and subjects presented in Neon Vernacular.]

For Yusef Komunyakaa, the experience that seared him into poetry was serving in Vietnam. In Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, Vietnam stalks Komunyakaa….

But for him, the atrocities [he witnessed] carry an extra burden. The first-person narrator cannot forget "how I helped ambush two Viet Cong / while plugged into the Grateful Dead," he writes in one of his previously published poems, "Jungle Fever." In some of the new poems, the same sentiment persists. "Fever" begins, "I took orders made my trail / Of blood, & you want me / To say it was right." He warns memorably: "You can hug flags into triangles, / But can't hide the blood / By tucking in the corners."

For shelter, Komunyakaa runs to...