Neon Vernacular.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Brief Article

For Yusef Komunyakaa, the experience that seared him into poetry was serving in Vietnam. In Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, Vietnam stalks Komunyakaa. As atrocities intruded on Chin's personal life, so they do on Komunyakaa's: "Last night/while making love/I cried out/|Hit the dirt!'"

But for him, the atrocities carry an extra burden. The first-person narrator cannot forget "how I helped ambush two Viet Cong/while plugged into the Grateful Dead," he writes in one of his previously published poems, "Jungle Fever." In some of the new poems, the same sentiment persists. "Fever" begins, "I took orders, made my trail/Of blood, & you want me/ To say it was right." He warns memorably: "You can hug flags into triangles,/But can't hide the blood/By tucking in the corners."

For shelter, Komunyakaa runs to women and to jazz, and many of his newer poems have a vibrant musicality about them. As he advises, "Don't try to make any sense/out of this; just let it take you/ like Pres's tenor & keep you human."

Yet many of the poems are direct and readily comprehensible, especially those that wrestle with his father. The new poem, "Songs for My Father," is as wrenching an Oedipal square-off as you'll find anywhere in contemporary letters.

Komunyakaa roots his poetry in his native Louisiana. He...