Pleasure Dome

Yusef Komunyakaa

When they say "new and collected," they mean "new and collected." Clocking in at just shy of five hundred pages, Pleasure Dome does collect, as far as I can tell, the sum total of Pulitzer winner Komunyakaa's work to date. It's a massive book, even larger than Jim Harrison's recent The Shape of the Journey, almost approaching the sheer magnitude of Hardy's Complete Poems, the largest single-author book of poetry to ever reside on my shelf. (Morris' The Earthly Paradise is in twelve volumes.) And while it does get inconsistent at times, the overall recommendation on it is a resonating yes.

Komunyakaa, a Vietnam war vet who began writing while in the bush, infuses much of his poetry with the war. This is not terribly surprising. What is is that, for atleast ninety-five percent of the war poetry, he does not allow the message to run away with the medium. That Komunyakaa's collections Toys in a Field and Dien Cai Dau are some of the most stirring work ever written on the Vietnam experience is testament to the power of McLuhan's oft-used truism "the medium is the message." Komunyakaa lets the story tell the story, and the story is stronger for it.

It is to be expected that no poet can be perfect, and this is true of Komunyakaa. However, the number of times he slips into messagizing mode can be counted here on the fingers of one hand, an absolutely astounding feat in a book of over four hundred pages of poetry; he is truly a master of the poetic art.

This is a book to be browsed through at leisure, not read per se; it took me almost six weeks to get through it, and I'm a speedreader. It demands time and effort, and will offer the reader willing to put them in rewards in kind.