The Emperor of Water Clocks
Book (italiano):
<p><b>The wildly enchanting new collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa</b><br><b></b><br>"If I am not Ulysses, I am / his dear, ruthless half-brother." So announces Yusef Komunyakaa early in his lush new collection,<i>The Emperor of Water Clocks</i>. But Ulysses (or his half brother) is but one of the beguiling guises Komunyakaa dons over the course of this densely lyrical book. Here his speaker observes a doomed court jester; here he is with Napoleon, as the emperor "tells the doctor to cut out his heart / & send it to the empress, Marie-Louise"; here he is at the circus, observing as "The strong man presses six hundred pounds, / his muscles flexed for the woman / whose T-shirt says,<i>these guns are loaded</i>"; and here is just a man, placing "a few red anemones / & a sheaf of wheat" on Mahmoud Darwish's grave, reflecting on why "I'd rather die a poet / than a warrior."<br>Through these mutations and migrations and permutations and peregrinations there are constants: Komunyakaa's jazz-inflected rhythms; his effortlessly surreal images; his celebration of natural beauty and of love. There is also his insistent inquiry into the structures and struggles of power: not only of, say, king against jester but of man against his own desire and of the present against the pernicious influence of the past.<br>Another brilliant collection from the man David Wojahn has called one of our "most significant and individual voices,"<i>The Emperor of Water Clocks </i>delights, challenges, and satisfies.</p>
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