Yusef Quotes & Sayings

I glimpsed Alice in Wonderland.
Her voice smelled like an orange,
though I'd never peeled an orange.
I knocked on the walls, in a circle. — Yusef Komunyakaa

The fact is ones own voice is not heard anywhere else. Its a challenge to be yourself. It takes a lot of courage. — Yusef Lateef

How, Yusef wondered, can two men joke like that and tomorrow be enemies. Perhaps they'd been enemies yesterday. He decided public servants weren't human. — Thomas Pynchon

Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It's a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault, — Yusef Komunyakaa

I think of my poems as personal and public at the same time. You could say they serve as psychological overlays. One fits on top of the other, and hopefully there's an ongoing evolution of clarity. — Yusef Komunyakaa

There's a sameness about American poetry that I don't
think represents the whole people. It represents a poetry
of the moment, a poetry of evasion, and I have problems
with this. I believe poetry has always been political, long
before poets had to deal with the page and white
space ... it's natural. — Yusef Komunyakaa

The older I get
the quicker Christmas comes,
but if I had to give up the heavenly
taste of Guinness dark, I couldn't
live another goddamn day. Darling,
you can chisel that into my headstone. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I knew life
Began where I stood in the dark,
Looking out into the light. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I let them [Kanye and Pharrell] be them; they let me be me. I'm just a little boy that does poetry whose friends got famous, and I like it that way. I like to be found. I don't want to be overexposed. I love when people discover me and discover my music. — Malik Yusef

I ate mythology & dreamt'
- Yusef Komunyakaa (Blackberries) — Yusef Komunyakaa

Poetry is a process of getting back to the unconscious. Hence, I am always writing-even when I'm not facing the white space. I feel writers are like reservoirs of images. We take in what is around us. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Go & tell your drinking buddies
& psychoanalyst your neighbor
has risen from the ashes. I wonder
if I should tell you about the love letters
hidden behind the doorjamb. This house
still stands among my lavender flowers.
Tell your inheritors to think of me
when they smile up at the sky. — Yusef Komunyakaa

See how forgiving - how brave nature is. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I'm a spiritual person, she said. I believe in Allah, you know, though I don't always call It 'Allah' and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the stars and this love-fear thing comes over me, you know? And sometimes I might sit in a Christian church listening to them talk about Isa with a book of Hafiz in my hands instead of the hymnal. And you know what, Yusef? Sometimes, every once in a while, I get out my old rug and I pray like Muhammad prayed. I never learned the shit in Arabic and my knees are uncovered, but if Allah has a problem with that then what kind of Allah do we believe in? — Michael Muhammad Knight

We were born between Oh Yeah
& Goddammit. I knew life
Began where I stood in the dark,
Looking out into the light,
& that sometimes I could see
Everything through nothing.
The backyard trees breathed
Like a man running from himself
As my brothers backed away
From the screendoor. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Through the years I have seen myself as a peaceful person, but the awareness of the anger is part of that process. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue. — Yusef Komunyakaa

In the old days, the general's ribbons / & medals rainbowed across his chest, / & if he were interrogating himself, / by now, blood would be on the walls. — Yusef Komunyakaa

We were The Hottentot Venus
Draped in our mothers' dresses,
Wearing rouge & lipstick,
Pillows tucked under floral
& print cloth, the first day of spring,
As we balanced on high heels.
Women sat in a circle talking
About men; the girls off
Somewhere else, in other houses.
We felt the last kisses
Our mothers would give us
On the mouth. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Cursing themselves in ragged dreams
fire has singed the edges of,
they know a slow dying the fields have come to terms with.
Shimmering fans work against the heat
& smell of gunpowder, making money
float from hand to hand. The next moment
a rocket pushes a white fist
through night sky, & they scatter like birds
& fall into the shape their lives
have become. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Tonight I feel the stars are out
to use me for target practice. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Whoever said men
hit harder when women
are around, is right.
Word for word,
we beat the love
out of each other. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Now I have beaten a song back into you, rise and walk away like a panther. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I see many black males grasping for some thread of hope. There are so many destructive practices, glimpses into a psychic abyss. That must be very frightening. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Foolhearted mindreader,
help us see how
the heart begs,
how fangs of opprobrium
possess our eyes. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Blue is the insides of something mysterious and lonely. I'd look at fish and birds, thinking the sky and water colored them. The first abyss is blue. An artist must go beyond the mercy of satin or water-from a gutty hue to that which is close to royal purple. All seasons and blossoms inbetween. Lavender. Theatrical and outrageous electric. Almost gray. True and false blue. Water and oil. The gas jet breathing in oblivion. The unstruck match. The blue of absence. The blue of deep presence. The insides of something perfect. — Yusef Komunyakaa

The normal kid can differentiate between various aspects of life, but a kid with dyslexia has to connect all those dots, and they have to link it like a chain. Teachers can't incorporate that. They don't have time; it's not their fault. They don't have the resources to give personal attention to each kid in the classroom. — Malik Yusef

Putting my hands on.
What April couldn't fix
Wasn't worth the time:
Egg shell & dried placenta
Light as memory.
Patches of fur, feathers,
& bits of skin. A nest
Of small deaths among anemone.
A canopy edged over, shadowplaying
The struggle underneath
As if it never happened — Yusef Komunyakaa

I said that love heals from inside. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I started to study the flute in 1951. The flute has been utilized by African-American musicians as far back as the early Twenties. If you take a look at some of the old pictures of Chick Webb, then you will see the flute right there on the bandstand among the woodwinds. — Yusef Lateef

We move like a platoon of silhouettes
balancing sledge hammers on our heads,
unaware our shadows have untied
from us, wandered off
& gotten lost. — Yusef Komunyakaa

When the soul looks out of its body, it should see only beauty in its path. These are the sights we must hold in mind, in order to move to a higher place. — Yusef Lateef

I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I've been here before, dreaming myself
backwards, among grappling hooks of light.
True to the seasons, I've lived every word
spoken. Did I walk into someone's nightmare? — Yusef Komunyakaa

I originally wanted to embrace the imagery and forthrightness of rap music. There are some interesting, dynamic voices in rap. But I find most of it irresponsible in its overt violence and commercialization of anger. As artists, we believe we can will action through language. If that's the case, we have to take responsibility for what we say. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I am this space my body believes in. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I'm aware of Yusef Lateef and Sun Ra and John Coltrane. My music cup runneth over. I try to encourage people: don't cut anything off, don't limit yourself. Give it a good listen: you might find something in that goofy Sun Ra noise, that dissonance. Before I learned 'official musicality' - which you should avoid at all costs - I listened to some Sun Ra and Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane and that's where 'Journey to the Center of the Mind' came from. When you intentionally and aggressively pursue musical communication with those powerfully impactful musical geniuses, you will pick up something. — Ted Nugent

The stories circulating that Kanye West's laptop has been stolen are completely false. His laptop has never been out of his possession. Hence, the laptop has not been hacked, and there has been no leak of personal data such as unreleased music, photographs, designs, videos or any other personal files. The leak today of the unreleased track 'Awesome' was unrelated and completely coincidental. — Malik Yusef

So the only way I could stave off any of these assaults was to become a gang banger, and to excel, so I could quell the behavior. If I excelled, then I could call the shots. So I became a community leader from inside. — Malik Yusef

You got to have dedicated people, a lot of dedicated folk. There's only so much one person can do. We really have to find people in our community that can give an hour a week. I was recruited because I started gangbanging at 12. I understand the structure; I understand the people inside. — Malik Yusef

I think of language as our first music. — Yusef Komunyakaa

My doors enter from the sidestreet,
my windows painted basement black,
my mouth kisses the blues harp,
my heart hides like notes
locked in a cedar chest. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I define poetry as celebration and confrontation. When we witness something, are we responsible for what we witness? That's an on-going existential question. Perhaps we are and perhaps there's a kind of daring, a kind of necessary energetic questioning. Because often I say it's not what we know, it's what we can risk discovering. — Yusef Komunyakaa

My music is jazz. — Yusef Lateef

It's all economic. Soda is easier to sell than orange juice because its costs less. Water, some coloring, some fizz, and this can, and we can sell this to you over and over and over again. And that's what rap is. — Malik Yusef

I'm turning you into a girl
chasing a butterfly, a she-wolf
on a hilltop, & then back into a woman. — Yusef Komunyakaa

The poet's role has changed over the centuries, the ages. The poets, the griots, used to be the keepers of the facts; they were the story tellers, and the stories were allegorically written truths: where we came from, how we migrated over this river, got with this tribe, became this nation, and tamed the mountains. It changed from that to being purely entertainment. And once it became purely entertainment, it lost something. — Malik Yusef

The place was a funeral pyre for the young
who died before knowing the thirst of man
or woman. Furies with snakes in their hair
wept. Tantalus ate pears & sipped wine
in a dream, as the eyes of a vulture
poised over Tityus' liver. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I excavate history. I look at lives buried under too much silence. Periods of time, like slavery, have to be revisited, reimagined, so we can move through them. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Islam's all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it be in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we've reduced our religion to fuckin' academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests but we're getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah. — Michael Muhammad Knight

Each culture has some knowledge. That's why I studied with Saj Dev, an Indian flute player. That's why I studied Stockhausen's music. The pygmies' music of the rain forest is very rich music. So the knowledge is out there. And I also believe one should seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. With that kind of inquisitiveness, one discovers things that were unknown before. — Yusef Lateef

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Administrators tend to lump Asians in Chicago into one group, not understanding that these kids would be fighting each other, the Cambodians and the Vietnamese. We started a thing called cultural gift sharing, where everyone comes and says what his culture is, so the teachers and the administrators could understand they are different. — Malik Yusef

I started in high school with a teacher there. I also took lessons at the Conservatory of Music in Detroit. Detroit was very motivating. There were a lot of local people who inspired me like Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Roy Brooks, Donald Byrd, etc. — Yusef Lateef

Being a father is the hardest job on the planet, because we don't have parental instincts like women have. You have to learn how to be a father before you even become a father, from a very young age. It's necessary to override what we're told in society a father should be, like if your son falls and scrapes his knee, you got to be tough. Baseball and all that are cool, but it's the tenderness and interactions that are really important. Boys are different; we have to impart that sensibility and that tenderness to them. — Malik Yusef

I thought about ancient times when we didn't have electric light. People were slaves to the ebb and the flow of the light cycle. Good Morning and Good Night represents one light cycle. — Malik Yusef

My great-grandfather Melvin had been a carpenter - so was my father - and they taught me the value of tools: saws, hammers, chisels, files and rulers. It all dealt with conciseness and precision. It eliminated guesswork. One has to know his tools, so he doesn't work against himself. — Yusef Komunyakaa

You can two-time satan
But you can't lick the Holy Ghost. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I've broken it down to three basic types of people in gangs. You have the first type, the most dangerous, which are the glory seekers. They just want to be popular, they want to be stars, and they can do that in gangbanging. Then you have the one that I think is the worst, which is the one that's expected to be in the gang. Then you have the ones that were like me; they had to be. — Malik Yusef

A goddess of dawn
scooted under a zing of barbed wire
to witness your birth. — Yusef Komunyakaa

We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project. — Yusef Komunyakaa

She lives between the Vale of Kashmir & nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky. The voice speaks of an atlas & a mask, a map of Punjab, an ugly scar from college days on her abdomen, the unsaid credo, but I still can't make the voice say, Look, I'm sorry. I've been dead for a long time. — Yusef Komunyakaa

It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I see myself as the oldest griot tradition of speaking to truth out here. There's a dark side that people don't even know is there. — Malik Yusef

I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me. — Yusef Komunyakaa

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument. — Yusef Lateef

I close my eyes and can see men drawing lines in the dust. America pushes through the membrane of mist and smoke, and I'm a small boy again in Bogalusa. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Loveless moments are to be avoided. — Yusef Lateef

They don't want art that might actually change the community. They just want consumers. They don't want people to manufacture things. They'll do the manufacturing, and they just need people to buy it, need youth to buy it. — Malik Yusef

Years ago you followed someone
here, in love with breath
kissing the nape of your neck,
back when it was easy to be
at least two places at once. — Yusef Komunyakaa

With those organizations, it's like time travel. I just reach back and find little kids who were like me. Maybe the circumstances vary, but the formula is the same. They're having problems reading, having problems grasping some of the things that are being taught to them. — Malik Yusef

I stared at a tree against dusk
Till it was a girl
Standing beside a country road
Shucking cane with her teeth.
She looked up & smiled
& waved. Lost in what hurts,
In what tasted good, could she
Ever learn there's no love
In sugar? — Yusef Komunyakaa