Talking Dirty to the Gods
A daredevil poetic achievement from a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa's Talking Dirty to the Gods was 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.

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Talking Dirty to the Gods
A daredevil poetic achievement from a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa's Talking Dirty to the Gods was 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.

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Talking Dirty to the Gods

Talking Dirty to the Gods

by Yusef Komunyakaa
Talking Dirty to the Gods

Talking Dirty to the Gods

by Yusef Komunyakaa

Paperback(First Edition)

$16.00 
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Overview

A daredevil poetic achievement from a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa's Talking Dirty to the Gods was 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780374527938
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: 09/12/2001
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 144
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.33(d)

About the Author

Yusef Komunyakaa’s books of poetry include Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth, The Emperor of Water Clocks, Testimony: A Tribute to Charlie Parker, The Chameleon Couch, Warhorses, Taboo, Talking Dirty to the Gods, and Neon Vernacular, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. His plays, performance art, and librettos have been performed internationally and include Wakonda's Dream, Saturnalia, Testimony, and Gilgamesh: A Verse Play. He teaches at New York University.

Read an Excerpt

No decree or creed can outlaw you

As you take every living thing apart. Little

Master of earth, no one gets to heaven

Without going through you first.

-from "Ode to the Maggot"

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