"[Yusef Komunyakaa] has a near-revelatory capacity to give himself over to his subject matter and to the taut concision of his free verse . . . Dazzling." --David Wojahn, Poetry
"Komunyakaa wonderfully achieves the combined mischief and moralizing of Catullus, one of his acknowledged heroes . . . He refuses to be trivial; and he even dares beauty." --April Bernard, The New York Times Book Review
"[Taboo] calls to mind Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman--the private gaze and the civic drum, purifying language, purifying history." --Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Washington Post Book World
