Book details

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021

Author: Yusef Komunyakaa

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

$12.99

About This Book

New and selected poems from the great Pulitzer Prize–winning poet

These songs run along dirt roads
& highways, crisscross lonely seas
&...

Page Count
288
On Sale
06/15/2021

Book Details

New and selected poems from the great Pulitzer Prize–winning poet

These songs run along dirt roads
& highways, crisscross lonely seas
& scale mountains, traverse skies
& underworlds of neon honkytonk,
Wherever blues dare to travel.

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth brings together selected poems from the past twenty years of Yusef Komunyakaa’s work, as well as new poems from the Pulitzer Prize winner. Komunyakaa’s masterful, concise verse conjures arresting images of peace and war, the natural power of the earth and of love, his childhood in the American South and his service in Vietnam, the ugly violence of racism in America, and the meaning of power and morality.

The new poems in this collection add a new refrain to the jazz-inflected rhythms of one of our “most significant and individual voices” (David Wojahn, Poetry). Komunyakaa writes of a young man fashioning a slingshot, workers who “honor the Earth by opening shine / inside the soil,” and the sounds of a saxophone filling a dim lounge in New Jersey. As April Bernard wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “He refuses to be trivial; and he even dares beauty.”

"Probably my favorite living poet. No one else taught me more about how important it was to think about how words make people feel. It's not enough for people to know something is true. They have to feel it's true." —Ta-Nehisi Coates, The New York Times Style Magazine

Imprint Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

ISBN

9780374600143

In The News

A monumental collection . . . No matter how well you know Komunyakaa’s poetry, you’ll find this collection an illuminating retrospective, and if you’re new to him, this is the place to start.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"This dazzling collection makes a definitive case for the Pulitzer Prize–winning Komunyakaa as a monumental and singular American voice. A jazzy master of enjambment and arresting opening lines, Komunyakaa synthesizes natural history, myth, and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity into sensory acts of witness . . . In this roving survey of history and nature, violence often meets beauty, but Komunyakaa never forgets how ‘The body remembers / every wish one lives for or doesn’t.’” —Publishers Weekly (Starred review)

“Twenty years of new and previously published poems combine to create an impressive new volume by Pulitzer Prize-winner Komunyakaa. The new work ushers the reader into the rhythmic meditations on topics that include racial violence, memory, and the duality of moments that are both ephemeral and timeless . .. Komunyakaa’s gift for beautifully revealing the godly alongside the earthly, the realistic alongside the surreal, is superbly showcased in this well-curated and essential collection.” —Booklist (Starred review)

"Yusef Komunyakaa’s poems reveal a unique understanding of the landscape of morality and justice in America; this collection brings together some of his most essential from the last two decades, a gift for both fans and newcomers alike. The result is a well-deserved testament to the power and weight of his work.” —Lit Hub

"The Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa again demonstrates why he is a giant of American poetry . . . Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth demonstrates Komunyakaa’s skill in using words to paint scenes not only with great emotional insight but a researched and understated worldliness as well, threading connections originally unseen and piecing together verses that come alive whether they are read silently alone or recited aloud in front of a crowd." —Avenue

"Komunyakaa is already a legendary figure in American poetry, beloved for his subtle ear and unflinching confrontations with the traumas of the past and present. This late-career retrospective finds the poet, now in his 70s, recalling the past with a new urgency, savoring the present, and preparing as well as he can for what comes next." —Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR

About the Creators

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

$12.99