Thirteen Kinds of Desire - where jazz and poetry ignite powerful experiences of impulse and essence.

This evocative new CD of 13 original compositions produced, co-written and sung by Pamela Knowles, set to the lyrics of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa is an intimate, provocative, compelling odyssey through song, revised myths and contemporary storytelling.

"Something to push against to get to the evidence inside us"

 (New Blues)

French translation by Karine Médecin-Lemon

Yusef Komunyakaa has eleven books of poems including Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems 1977 - 1989, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award. Alongside Jazz Musician John Tchicai and ensemble, Komunyakaa reads poems on the 1998 CD recording, Love Notes from the Madhouse taken from Neon Vernacular and his most recent volume, Thieves of Paradise, a finalist for the 1999 National Books Critics Circle Award. Books published between 1999 and 2001 are Blue Notes: Essays, Interviews & Commentaries - a University of Michigan Press "Poets on Poetry" Volume, Talking Dirty to the Gods (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975 - 1999 (Wesleyan).

"...neither codifies the status quo nor indulges gibberish but rather offers a rare glimpse into the terrible fire of experience. No one is writing like Komunyakaa today. "

Library Journal

Yusef Komunyakaa

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