SOURCE: Kirsch, Adam. “Verse Averse.” New Republic 224, no. 4493 (26 February 2001): 38-41.

In the following review, Kirsch discusses the jazz inspiration in Komunyakaa's poetry. Kirsch also praises Talking to the Gods as Komunyakaa's “best and more beautiful book so far.”

Poetry may aspire, like all the arts, to the condition of music; but if it approaches too closely it is likely to pay a price. A poem can be said to be musical in several ways: it can take the form of a lyric to accompany instrumental music; it can create a coherent pattern of sound through meter and rhyme; it can attempt to mimic the overall impression created by a piece of music, usually by straying from denotation into rich connotation. The first kind of verbal music is ancient: the word “lyric” originally meant poetry accompanied by a lyre. The second is still what we usually mean when we...