Thieves of Paradise [Hardcover]

Yusef Komunyakaa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 1998

Centering on the disorienting experiences of the returning soldier and drawing on multiple traditions, Yusef Komunyakaa's poetry is potent, live, and, like the strains of jazz running through it, an erudite and soulful music.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this first collection since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems (1994), Komunyakaa brings his lush, propulsive, myth-making language to a wide range of subjects: Charlie Parker and Ishi; the California Indian; the wildlife of Australia and South Africa. All are the title's "thieves," casing the joint and then snatching the bliss brought to us by the senses: "the lips,/ salt & honeycomb on the tongue.../ how everything begs/ blood into song & prayer/ inside an egg." Such pleasures are found and taken despite the lingering pain of Vietnam, where "the earth swings on a bellrope, limp as a body bag tied to a limb, and the moon overflows with blood," and the dark history of Western culture. "The Tally," a brilliant reckoning of 18th-century trade, reveals the taint even intellectual history bears: "They're counting nails,/ barrels of salt pork,/ sacks of tea and sugar.../ They're uncrating hymnals,/ lace, volumes of Hobbes,/ Rousseau & kegs of rum./ ...They're counting women/ & men." But Komunyakaa, a Princeton professor, also finds resonance in that culture, invoking Pascal, Goya and "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" as sources of meaning and joy, along with "Cracker Jacks" and "Art Tatum's keys." Here, as in the work of kindred spirits the Beats, a deliberately raw poetry is fruitfully thrown in with the cooked. The resulting vision of paradise?"the same feeling that drives/ sap through mango leaves,/ up into the fruit's sweet/ flesh & stony pit"?is a compelling one.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A Pulitzer Prize winner, Komunyakaa is a witness to historyAbut that pat description hardly does justice to the richness and power of his poems. Moving from a prehistoric cave to "a dead child/ on the floor between its mother/ and four slavecatchers" to a summer's night in Hanoi, the poet manages to give us "a rare glimpse into the terrible fire of experience" (LJ 6/1/98).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 136 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press/University of New England (March 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819563307
• ISBN-13: 978-0819563309
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,383,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the most original poets out there, September 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Thieves of Paradise (Hardcover)

I had known of Komunyakaa for a while, but only recently began reading him. I'm glad I did. This is a book full of very different types of poems--some with regular stanza lengths, some with numbered sections, some short and without stanzas--and it is consistently excellent throughout. I think many poets tend to repeat themselves, but Komunyakaa seems to be one of the most courageous and technically sound poets there is. He is known for his poems about jazz, racial prejudice and the Vietnam War ( the entire section "Debriefing Ghosts" is a terrific sequence of anti-war poems), but I also enjoyed the ones not as easily catagorized. "Kosmos" is one of the best poems written to Walt Whitman I've ever read, and "The Glass Ark," about a couple unearthing fossils in the LaBrea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, is funny, playful and sexual without losing an odd seriousness.His language at times reminds me of Charles Simic--he seemingly finds the most disparate images that somehow seem "right"--but he is entirely on his own when it comes to combining long and short sequences, humor, sex, music and memory. Highly reccomended.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary, May 3, 1999

By 

"dmax801" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arcady (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Hardcover)

I was stunned at the amount of intelligence and density in this poetry. I ordered this after hearing "The Deck" on NPR, as a gift for my wife, and we both consider it a treasure.