The Prize Tonight

Thirty minutes into Yusef Komunyakaa’s reading at the CSU student center, I open this file and find a half-written reminder about this reading—well, I don’t have to finish that one.  So I am writing a review instead of a promotion, after a long while.  That is good:  a reminder to do more reviews. 

Yusef may be the closest I will get to fame: he is a Pulitzer-prize wining poet who was a graduate student at CSU when I was an undergraduate English major with a concentration in poetry.  Concentration in poetry—I like that phrase.  Poetry is about concentration, isn’t it.  Komunyakaa certainly demonstrates that. 

In a grey newsboy hat he reads about pig weed and pig iron.

The last time I saw him, he was the featured word artist for Poets in the Park in Loveland;  the recipient of the poetry pineapple from the inimitable Jack Martin, local poet and pedagogue.    

Tonight, I am near the door to the hallway and the chatter from there is annoying, but do you go out and shush them?  Tell them to pipe down because a famous poet is reading?  You could. You would be justified.  But you defer to letting the noise become part of the music from the podium.  And you remark on the luck of your creative life crossing paths with this most remarkable man/poet.

“Rock me Mercy” –you have to love that title—and every line following lives up to it.

        “guardian angel we know you cannot be every where at once.”

         “river stones are listening” 

Thank you, Bill Temblay for teaching  him. Thank you, Yusef for being brave enough to come to this little white town almost 40 years ago.  

Thanks for walking through my life, and on and on and on.