My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 58

Sources + Additional
Resources

Though Komunyakaa’s years and
contexts are different from George Moses
Horton’s, there is, in both their work,
a coming to oneself via the work of
making and the work of remembering —
connecting, again, the spleen to the
compass to West Africa. There is the
sensuality of bodies moving in and out
of other bodies, becoming other bodies,
creating and bearing other bodies. And
this Legba, this god of the crossroads
is known for sensual and sexual desire,
too. The quest of freedom is always
connected to one’s system of desire.
And to love. Toni Morrison’s Beloved
helps us here.

Arthur. “The LIFE, and dying SPEECH of ARTHUR, a Negro
Man; Who was Executed at Worcester, October 20, 1768.
For a Rape committed on the Body of one Deborah
Metcalfe.” First published by John Kneeland and Seth
Adams in Milk-Street, 1768.
http://opac.newsbank.com/select/evans/10822.
Davis, Erik. “Who is Eleggua? Trickster at the Crossroads.”
First published in Gnosis 19, Spring 1991. 10 August 2003.
http://www.techgnosis.com/trickster.html.
García Lorca, Federico. In Search of Duende. Trans.
Christopher Maurer. New York, New York: New Directions,
1998.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Magic City. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan
University Press, 1992, p. 42.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Neon Vernacular. Hanover, NH:
Wesleyan University Press, 1993, p. 142.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. “Crossroads.” Ploughshares. (1997): 1-6.

Consider Paul D. reflecting on a
conversation with Sethe:

Komunyakaa, Yusef. Blue Notes. Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press, 2000.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. The Chameleon Couch. New York, NY:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, p. 10.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York, NY: Knopf, 1987, p. 162.
Russell, Heather. Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the
African Atlantic. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press,
2009.
Sherman, Joan, ed. The Black Bard of North Carolina.
Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press,
1997.
Sherman, Suzan. “Interview with Paul Muldoon and Yusef
Komunyakaa.” BOMB 65 (Fall 1998): 74-80.
Waldman, Amy. “A Pianist’s Final Piece: DeWitt’s Descent.”
The New York Times, 18 January, 1998.
+ SEE
YouTube: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, “Seasons” (live),
Montreaux, 1972.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXD1OrmzCQI

Collage titles are, in
order of appearance:
1

George Moses Horton, Myself
by George Moses Horton

2 Anodyne, Komunyakaa
3 Blue Notes, Komunyakaa
4 The Shortest Night, Komunyakaa
5

Ode to the Chameleon, Komunyakaa

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

I’d argue that Komunyakaa’s poetic
vision is constantly limping
toward this realization, is a practice
in beautiful and perpetual movement
toward the freedom Sethe and Paul D.
consider above — the freedom Legba
symbolizes. Etymology tells us that the
word “free” (used as an adjective here)
can be traced through Old English,
Dutch, amon g other languages, to the
eventual Indo-European root “pri”—
which is “to love.” In Komunyakaa’s is
a moving between worlds that is,
perhaps, a remembering. A remembering
of this great atomic kinship that ensures
that we are made up of each other.
There is such power in this way of
thinking and in this ability to be and to
be unfurled, freed into new seeing and,
thusly, new ways of loving the world.

57

Listening to the doves in Alfred,
Georgia, and having neither the
right nor the permission to enjoy
it because in that place mist, doves,
sunlight, copper dirt, moon —
everything belonged to the men
who had the guns. Little men,
some of them, big men too[…]
And these “men” who made even
vixen laugh could, if you let them,
stop you from hearing doves or
loving moonlight. So you protected
yourself and loved small. Picked
the tiniest stars out of the sky to
own; lay down with head twisted
in order to see the loved one
over the rim of the trench before
you slept. Stole shy glances at her
between the trees at chain-up.
Glass blades, salamanders, spiders,
woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom
of ants. Anything bigger wouldn’t
do. A woman, a child, a brother —
a big love like that would split
you wide open in Alfred, Georgia.
He knew exactly what she meant:
to get to a place where you could
love anything you chose — not to
need permission for desire — well
now, that was freedom.

Komunyakaa, Yusef. Thieves of Paradise. Hanover, NH:
Wesleyan University Press, 1998, p. 127.