The Emperor of Water Clocks

Big, full of characters, pleasant, and global in scope, Pulitzer Prize–winner Komunyakaa (The Chameleon Couch) moves away from the topics that won him his fame in a collection that should rank among his finest. During the 1980s, Komunyakaa’s distinctively syncopated, jazz-influenced lines portrayed his Louisiana youth and his experience in Vietnam; more recently his sequences have updated and retold myths. Here, the poet is all over the map: ancient Egypt to Venice, “Yama or Carthage,” Appalachia and beyond. He asks, “How many fallen empires dwell here triggered by a sundial,/ revolutions & rebirths?” Komunyakaa pursues an almost Heaney-like lyricism: “night sirens/ singing my birth when water/ broke into a thousand blossoms/ in a landlocked town of the South.” Yet he returns focus to an array of mythical, current, and historical persons: out-of-work actors in modern Manhattan, Japanese dancer and choreographer Michio Ito, a battle-mad soldier, the Minotaur. Giants of jazz accompany non-Western music as models and as topics; narrative and introspection go hand in hand. There’s even dry humor. Elegies and tributes to other senior poets—Galway Kinnell, Mahmoud Darwish, Derek Walcott—seem friendly and unforced, but unsurprising: what sticks around are the stranger, less famous figures who populate most of the book, brought to life in Komunyakaa’s precarious, lively lines. [em](Oct.) [/em]