Magic City

Komunyakaa vividly evokes his childhood in Bogalusa, Louisiana, once a center of Klan activity, and later a focus of Civil Rights efforts. He portrays a child's dawning awareness of the natural and social order around him, rhythms of life in the community, the constant struggle for survival in the face of poverty and racism, the adolescent's awakening sexuality, the beginnings of the poet's awareness of his life and community as it exists in the context of history, and his emerging understanding of his own identity.

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, recipient of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award for his book Neon Vernacular, is professor of English at Indiana University. His other books include Copacetic (1984), I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Award, and Dien Cai Dau (1988).