SOURCE: Collins, Michael. “Staying Human.” Parnassus 18-19, nos. 1-2 (1993): 126-49.

In the following review of Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular and Magic City, Collins compares Komunyakaa's Vietnam War Poetry with his “peacetime” poetry. Collins observes that Komunyakaa's poetry expresses a broad conceptual and emotional range.

I went to Vietnam as a basic naive young man of eighteen. Before I reached my nineteenth birthday, I was an animal. … They prepared us for Vietnam as a group of individuals who worked together as a unit to annihilate whatever enemy we came upon … There was this saying: “Yeah though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, ‘cause I'm the baddest motherfucker in the valley’”. … I collected about 14 ears and fingers. With them strung on a piece of leather around my neck, I would go downtown, and you would get free drugs, free booze, free pussy because they wouldn't...