Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters: Poems

Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, Yusef Komunyakaa served in the United States Army from 1969 to 1970 as a correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross during the Vietnam War, earning a Bronze Star. He holds a BA from the University of Colorado Springs, an MA from Colorado State University, and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His collection Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems 1977–1989 (Wesleyan University Press, 1993) received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Other collections include Dien Cai Dau (Wesleyan, 1988) and Talking Dirty to the Gods (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). He is a distinguished senior poet at New York University.