Thieves of Paradise

"What is most gratifying about Komunyakaa's [poems] . . . is their power to convince us that the individual imagination is more than equal to the most excruciating historical burden."?New Yorker

"In this first collection since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems (1994), Komunyakaa brings his lush, propulsive, myth-making language to a wide range of subjects: Charlie Parker and Ishi; the California Indian; the wildlife of Australia and South Africa.... Here, as in the work of kindred spirits the Beats, a deliberately raw poetry is fruitfully thrown in with the cooked. The resulting vision of paradise ? 'the same feeling that drives/ sap through mango leaves,/ up into the fruit's sweet/ flesh & stony pit' ? is a compelling one."?Publishers Weekly

"Komunyakaa's heroic attempt to reconcile so many different cultural manifestations, tendencies, and influences reveals nothing short of a desire to heal, through both confrontation and empathy, the wounds of history."?American Book Review

"What is most gratifying about Komunyakaa's [poems] . . . is their power to convince us that the individual imagination is more than equal to the most excruciating historical burden."?New Yorker

"Komunyakaa is a poet of the human heart, in all its joys and horrors, fiercely present as it pounds awy at the center of every human being's consciousness. He enlarges our idea of what poetry is, challenging us to go beyond our own narrow definitions . . . Buy it now, find your own peaceful corner of our shared and imperfect paradise, and prepare yourself to be robbed of all you thought you knew, to experience criminal bliss."?Washington Post Book World