S1E6 - Latitudes
Season 1, Episode 6
Yusef Komunyakaa’s war poem, “Latitudes,” begins with a curious sentence: “If I am not Ulysses, I am/ his dear, ruthless half brother.” Chi and Chad discuss what this poem has to say about the aftermath of wars ancient and modern and the power of the subjunctive.
Sources and references:
Yusef Komunyakaa, Emperor of Water Clocks
the episode with the sirens appears in Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey
Penelope’s test of Odysseus appears in Book XXIII of the Odyssey
Stephen Dobyns, Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry, chapter eight "closure.
Stacey D’Erasmo, The Art of Intimacy
Kirkland C. Jones, “Folk Idiom in the Literary Expression of Two African American Authors: Rita Dove and Yusef Komunyakaa,” in Language and Literature in the African American Imagination, edited by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay
Allen Tate, “Ode to the Confederate Dead”
Further reading:
a short biography of Yusef Komunyakaa at the Poety Foundation