Yusef Komunyakaa Analysis

Yusef Komunyakaa has spent decades fighting. With a life spanning the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War, he is no stranger to turmoil. Growing up in a small, segregated Louisiana town dominated by the Klu Klux Clan, many of Komunyakaa’s poems express a need for escape. However, his poems also share a theme of perseverance. The poems “Slam Dunk & Hook”, “Ode to a Drum” and “Venus Flytrap”, show not only Komunyakaa’s unique style of writing, but his encompassing theme of the ability the need to overcome. In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, "Slam, Dunk & Hook," he reflects on playing basketball in the south during the 50s or 60s. On the surface the poem simply describes a lively game, but through figurative language and
In it, an African hunter kills a gazelle to create a drum with its hide. The hunter tells the gazelle it was killed because he must “drive / trouble from the valley. / Trouble in the hills / Trouble on the river / too” ("Yusef Komunyakaa." 2004). Once again, the speaker is surrounded by conflict and obstacles, and yet unafraid. The speaker even encourages the gazelle, stating that “pressure can make everything / whole again” ("Yusef Komunyakaa." 2004). The hunter acknowledges his own struggle as well as that of the gazelle, and praises both as ways to become stronger. This is illustrated best in the last two lines, which state, “I have beaten a song back into you, / rise & walk away like a panther” ("Yusef Komunyakaa." 2004). Despite capture, pain, and death, the gazelle emerges stronger than it was before. Komunyakaa saw strength stemming from struggle not only in his own life, but the lives of African-Americans as a whole. In an interview with William Matthews and Robert Kelly, Komunyakaa himself says, “historically, the African-American has had to survive by his or her sheer nerve and wit” ("Jazz and Poetry: A Conversation”). He then describes music, like basketball, as a way to find freedom, enjoyment, and