Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan Poetry)

Rating:
Summary: This book HAS no merits to ignore!
Review: i am not a college professor, nor am i a distinguished poet. i haven't even finished my undergraduate studies. but anyone who ignores the merit of any medium of art is more stupid than i am. komunyakaa's work doesn't adhere to everyone's standards. it cannot satisfy every critic, becauase a poet doesn't write solely for its audience. komunyakaa's poetry soars due to his use of juxtaposition, or duality if you will. he combines colloquial street-jive with allusive metaphors. he sews one visceral image into a beautiful one, creating a unique feel akin to surrealism. however, never has surrealism been more personal. his poetry is a soul-searing inspection that is complex enough to reflect on an entire society. each person has a right to their opinion, just as komunyakaa has every right to write poetry his way. so say what you will about how he's not an amazing poet, you have every right, but i have every right to say you're wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Brilliant!
Review: Komunyakaa is by far the best American poet writing today. Pay no attention to those who fail to understand his unique way with words. Purists write boring poetry anyway...

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful collection.
Review: Mr. Komunyakaa is a wonderful poet deserving of all the praise he has garnered. This book is a perfect opportunity for new readers to introduce themselves to his charming work.

Rating:
Summary: Judge him by the readers who praise him
Review: Updated June 2003: It's hard work combating ignorance about language these days. What gets called "diversity," for instance, treats all members of a particular minority as if they are one disadvantaged person; what gets called "diversity" is actually racial stereotyping, the very opposite of diversity. Proper grammar is not just for prose. Most people know this, but the reader from Jamaica Plain, MA, does not. There are poets (Dickinson, for example) who break the rules for a reason, but Komunyakaa's mistakes are too subtle and useless to be for any reason other than his own sloppiness with language. The reader from Los Angeles suggests that anyone who does not like Komunyakaa does not "understand" his use of language. Typical liberal arrogance--"anyone who disagress with me must not understand." So again I say: judge Komunyakaa by the readers who praise him.
The reader from Tucson who thinks that whoever disagrees with him is not really paying attention and who puts the word "review" in quotes when referring to others' reviews exhibits the same kind of immaturity and macho arrogance that Komunyakaa exhibits in many of his poems. Other problems? Many grammar errors, explicit contempt for women, "political correctness" rather than real emotion or thought. My favorite Komunyakaa phrase? "Steamy vats of serenity." I'm not making this up. Eighty years after Ezra Pound famously made fun of ineffective abstraction with the phrase "dim lands of peace," Komunyakaa--ever earnest, utterly lacking in a sense of irony--ends a poem with the phrase "steamy vats of serenity." Now if you want real poetry that stands out from what Donald Hall once called the Workshop McPoem (and which Hall, alas, now writes), then I recommend Anthony Hecht and Greg Williamson and Amy Gerstler and Laurie Sheck (although not Black Series) and Jay Wright.

Rating:
Summary: Judge him by the readers who praise him
Review: What Komunyakaa brings so decisively to poetry is an exquisite and pungent language, woven into imagery that draws readers down the corridors of near surreal, yet enthralling, worlds. Forget the obtuse, emotional, and otherwise pseudo-critical 'reviews': Komunyakaa refuses to replicate the limpness and timidity that characterizes so much of the poetry of our day. More to the point, the reader who is truly paying attention comes away from these poems with a kind of vertigo spun from a refreshing interplay of similes and metaphors -- both complex and extended. This applies to every book of his poetry, all of which I highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Brilliant!
Review: Yusef Komunyakaa is one of the few no-nonsense poets of our time. If you are one who looks for proper grammar in poetry, then maybe you should be reading prose. I have found that most people who enjoy poetry, enjoy it for the (excuse the borrowing) truth and beauty it discovers and is able to share with the reader. Although most sweeping generalizations on "how to" write poetry are flawed, it makes sense that Ezra Pound would want to set forth his own rules about abstraction, ... .... However, it makes no sense to apply rules set forth decades ago about poetry that is being written in the present ... . Pound was a member of a different literary movement than Komunyakaa, and I don't see what his unrelated take on abstraction has to do with Komunyakaa's writing. Komunyakaa is not abstract, and he is able to write about his life experience--including his time in Vietnam--with clarity and elegance. ...I would [also] recommend his book "Dien Cai Dau" which is perhaps his least abstract and most grammatically correct book of poetry....

Rating:
Summary: brilliance without the grammar
Review: Yusef Komunyakaa is one of the few no-nonsense poets of our time. If you are one who looks for proper grammar in poetry, then maybe you should be reading prose. I have found that most people who enjoy poetry, enjoy it for the (excuse the borrowing) truth and beauty it discovers and is able to share with the reader. Although most sweeping generalizations on "how to" write poetry are flawed, it makes sense that Ezra Pound would want to set forth his own rules about abstraction, ... .... However, it makes no sense to apply rules set forth decades ago about poetry that is being written in the present ... . Pound was a member of a different literary movement than Komunyakaa, and I don't see what his unrelated take on abstraction has to do with Komunyakaa's writing. Komunyakaa is not abstract, and he is able to write about his life experience--including his time in Vietnam--with clarity and elegance. ...I would [also] recommend his book "Dien Cai Dau" which is perhaps his least abstract and most grammatically correct book of poetry....

Rating:
Summary: Very big and very good.
Review: Yusef Komunyakaa, Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan, 2001)

When they say "new and collected," they mean "new and collected." Clocking in at just shy of five hundred pages, Pleasure Dome does collect, as far as I can tell, the sum total of Pulitzer winner Komunyakaa's work to date. It's a massive book, even larger than Jim Harrison's recent The Shape of the Journey, almost approaching the sheer magnitude of Hardy's Complete Poems, the largest single-author book of poetry to ever reside on my shelf. (Morris' The Earthly Paradise is in twelve volumes.) And while it does get inconsistent at times, the overall recommendation on it is a resonating yes.

Komunyakaa, a Vietnam war vet who began writing while in the bush, infuses much of his poetry with the war. This is not terribly surprising. What is is that, for atleast ninety-five percent of the war poetry, he does not allow the message to run away with the medium. That Komunyakaa's collections Toys in a Field and Dien Cai Dau are some of the most stirring work ever written on the Vietnam experience is testament to the power of McLuhan's oft-used truism "the medium is the message." Komunyakaa lets the story tell the story, and the story is stronger for it.

It is to be expected that no poet can be perfect, and this is true of Komunyakaa. However, the number of times he slips into messagizing mode can be counted here on the fingers of one hand, an absolutely astounding feat in a book of over four hundred pages of poetry; he is truly a master of the poetic art.

This is a book to be browsed through at leisure, not read per se; it took me almost six weeks to get through it, and I'm a speedreader. It demands time and effort, and will offer the reader willing to put them in rewards in kind. *** ½