SOURCE: Komunyakaa, Yusef with Fran Gordon. “Blue Note in a Lyrical Landscape.” Poets & Writers 28, no. 6 (November-December 2000): 28-33.

In the following interview, Komunyakaa discusses his influences, including jazz, Southern literature, and his experiences serving in the Vietnam conflict.

In 1994 Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 1993) won the Pulitzer Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the William Faulkner Prize, awarded by the Université de Rennes. His collection of poems Thieves of Paradise (Wesleyan, 1998) was a finalist for the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award. That same year, Komunyakaa was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His distinguished list of honors began with a Bronze Star for his work as a news correspondent during the Vietnam War. At a reception earlier this year commemorating the 25th anniversary of the end of the war, Komunyakaa—who has been classified as a “jazz poet” or a “Southern writer...