Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems

Redolent with references and deep with imagery, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth, the latest collection of poems from Yusef Komunyakaa is the kind of rich and challenging work readers have come to expect from the internationally known poet.

The newest poems traffic beautifully in the language of the body, of blood and sweat and what it means to work, the toll labor takes, and the lives we construct as time passes us. Walt Whitman is echoed in “A Prayer for Workers,” and the deep South rings out through “The Soul’s Soundtrack”: “words / follow the river through pine / & oak, muscadine & redbud, / & the extinct Lord God bird.”

But, if you are considering this publication solely for new work, the book has little to offer. The majority is comprised of poems that have appeared in collections published in the last twenty years. If you are new to Komunyakaa, though, this is an excellent primer on one of the most important working American poets.