SOURCE: Finkelstein, Norman. “Like an Unknown Voice Rising Out of Flesh.” Ohio Review, no. 52 (1994): 136-9.

In the following review of Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular, Finkelstein praises the poet's work.

Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular presents about twenty years worth of poetry: poetry that shudders with desire, past and present, frustrated and fulfilled. Remembrance is the motive force behind much of this work, but the past is rarely presented as a scene, neither a background for a current emotional state nor a canvas on which the poet can show off his descriptive powers. Rather, in Komunyakaa's strongest poems, time is the medium for a complex dialogue, which is intensified by the poet's mordant wit and flashy but carefully modulated language. Komunyakaa's sense of personal time is infected by the disease of history. When memory and anecdote constitute the poem's body, it's best not to seek a cure.

Thus, much of Komunyakaa's...