Yusef Komunyakaa, Magic City (1992) The Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Komunyakaa is a Professor in both the Council of the Humanities and the Program in Creative Writing here at Princeton.  He is also a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  His other published work includes:  • Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1978)  • Copacetic (1984)  • I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986)  • Dien Cai Dau (1988)  • Editor (with Sascha Feinstein), The Jazz Poetry Anthology (1991-1996)  • Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1993)  • Thieves of Paradise (1998)

Pre-reading questions:

• A general suggestion: As you read through Magic City, take time to linger over individual poems, marking particularly striking lines, words, and images.  But also take time to think about the collection as a whole.  Do the poems fit together in some way?  Is there a particular narrative that connects them, as there seems to be underneath the separate vignettes of The House on Mango Street?  Or is it a thread of common images that binds the poems together?  Or, in the end, are they simply separate poems gathered into one book?
• What is the "Magic City" of the book's title?  Is it childhood itself?  Is it memory?  Is it something else?  Is the title meant ironically or straightforwardly?  How do you know?
• What are the qualities of the voice of the speaker in these poems?  How does that voice compare to the voices of the speakers we have examined in "In the Waiting Room" and The House on Mango Street?
• What thematic connections—or disjunctions—do you see between Magic City and either Bishop's or Cisneros's texts?
• What stylistic connections, if any, do you see?  Are there any images here that seem particularly resonant in relation to "In the Waiting Room" or Mango Street?
• These poems require some very careful reading, and at times the meanings of individual lines or images may—particularly on first reading—be difficult to ascertain.  How does this affect your experience of the individual poems, or of the book as a whole?  Do certain meanings become more clear over the course of the book?  What special strategies do you have to employ to try to make sense of the "hard" moments in these poems?

Web links:

• The Academy of American Poets
• The Cortland Review (an online literary magazine in real audio)
• Yusef Komunyakaa -- Cover Page