April 9, 2001 Yusef Komunyakaa to Read His Poems at the Library of Congress

Press Contact: Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189
Public Contact: Jennifer Rutland (202) 707-5395

On Thursday, April 12, poet Yusef Komunyakaa will read his poems at the Library of Congress. The program, presented under the auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund, will be at 6:45 p.m. in the Montpelier Room on the 6th floor of the James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. Tickets are not required.

Yusef Komunyakaa is Professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. His 12 books of poems include a new collection, Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems (2001); Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000); Thieves of Paradise, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 (1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Magic City (1992); Dien Cai Dau (1988), which won The Dark Room Poetry Prize; I Aplogize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Award; and Copacetic (1984).

Yusef Komunyakaa's prose is collected in Blues Notes: Essays, Interviews & Commentaries (2000). He also co-edited, with J.A. Sascha Feinstein, The Jazz Poetry Anthology (1991) and co-translated, with Martha Collins, The Insomnia of Fire by Nguyen Quang Thieu (1995). His other awards and honors include the William Faulkner Prize from the Université de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, where he served as a correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross. In 1999 he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

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PR 01-056
2001-04-09
ISSN 0731-3527