Talking dirty to the gods : poems / by Yusef Komunyakaa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Komunyakaa, Yusef.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

x, 134 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Summary:

A daredevil poetic achievement nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award . . . A god isn't worth A drop of water in the hell of his good Imagination, if we can't curse Sunsets & threaten to forsake him In his storehouse of belladonna, Tiger hornets, & snakebites. --from "Meditations in a Swine Yard" No turn in any life cycle is taboo as Yusef Komunyakaa examines the primal rituals shared by insects, animals, human beings, and deities in "Talking Dirty to the Gods." From "Hearsay" to "Heresy," these 132 poems, each consisting of four quatrains, are framed by innuendo and lively satire. Komunyakaa looks to nature and configures his own paradigm, in which an event as commonplace as the jewel wasp laying an egg in a cockroach becomes every bit as grand as Zeus's infidelity. The formally rigorous collection is itself a design for a systematic cosmos, a world compressed but abundant in surprise and delight.

ISBN:

0374272557

OCLC:

43323702