Background

Komunyakaa, the author of "Ode to a Drum," is an African American poet, born to working-class parents in rural Louisiana. A profoundly intellectual man who spent time in Vietnam as a correspondent, Komunyakaa addresses a wide range of social, political, cultural, mythical, and intellectual issues and themes in his poems. His poems are often written in conversational tones and often use jazz-inspired rhythms and diction in some significant ways reminiscent of the poems of Langston Hughes and Amiri Baraka, among many others.

"Ode to a Drum" takes on themes of African music and traditions that are familiar to readers of Komunyakaa's poetry, and, like much of his work, the poem can be read on several levels. On a literal level, the poem is an account, through the eyes of an African drum maker, of the making of a drum: the killing of a gazelle, the stretching of...