16 Facts About Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa was born on James William Brown; April 29,1941 and is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Yusef Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his contribution to poetry.

Yusef Komunyakaa grew up in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana.

Yusef Komunyakaa said that his grandfather had reached the United States as a stowaway in a ship from Trinidad.

Yusef Komunyakaa worked as a specialist for the military paper, Southern Cross, covering actions and stories, interviewing fellow soldiers, and publishing articles on Vietnamese history, which earned him a Bronze Star.

Yusef Komunyakaa has since used these experiences as the source of his war poetry collections Toys in a Field and Dien Cai Dau, the title of which derives from a derogatory term in Vietnamese for American soldiers.

Yusef Komunyakaa has said that following his return to the United States, he found the American people's rejection of Vietnam veterans to be every bit as painful as the racism he had experienced while growing up in the American South before the Civil Rights Movement.

Yusef Komunyakaa began to write poetry in 1973 and took the name Yusef Komunyakaa.

Yusef Komunyakaa taught at Indiana University Bloomington until the fall of 1997, when he became a professor in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University.

Yusef Komunyakaa is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

Yusef Komunyakaa's I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, published in 1986, won the San Francisco Poetry Prize.

In 2004, Yusef Komunyakaa began a collaboration with dramaturge and theater producer Chad Gracia on a dramatic adaptation of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Yusef Komunyakaa held the Ruth Lilly Professorship for two years from 1989 to 1990.

Yusef Komunyakaa later had a relationship with India-born poet Reetika Vazirani with whom he had a child.

Yusef Komunyakaa recalls reading the Bible in his youth and discovering what he believed to be underlying poetic elements.

Yusef Komunyakaa pays his respects to early influences such as Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Phillis Wheatley.