Talking Dirty to the Gods
Yusef Komunyakaa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
4.00
· 6 ratings · 134 pages · Published: 01 Sep 2000
. . . A god isn't worth
A drop of water in the hell of his good
Imagination, if we can't curse
Sunsets & threaten to forsake him
In 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.
Tagged as:
- fantasy 4
- folktales & legends 3
- literary fiction 3
- satire 2
- funny 2
- black mc 2
- retellings 2
- protagonists of colour 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- book 1
- adult fiction 1