Talking Dirty to the Gods: Poems
Books / Paperback
Books › Poetry › American › General
ISBN: 0374527938 / Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux, September 2001
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet-author of the critically acclaimed Thieves of Paradise explores rituals that link humans, animals, and insects in this lively, often satirical collection of poems.
Read More
A daredevil poetic achievement from a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa's Talking Dirty to the Gods was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award . . . A god isn't worthA drop of water in the hell of his goodImagination, if we can't curse Sunsets & threaten to forsake himIn his storehouse of belladonna,Tiger hornets, & snakebites.--from "Meditations in a Swine Yard"No turn in any life cycle is taboo as Yusef Komunyakaa examines the primal rituals shared by insects, animals, human beings, and deities in Talking Dirty to the Gods. From "Hearsay" to "Heresy," these 132 poems, each consisting of four quatrains, are framed by innuendo and lively satire. Komunyakaa looks to nature and configures his own paradigm, in which an event as commonplace as the jewel wasp laying an egg in a cockroach becomes every bit as grand as Zeus's infidelity. The formally rigorous collection is itself a design for a systematic cosmos, a world compressed but abundant in surprise and delight.
Read Less