Yusef+Komunyakaa

Samantha Haney *click on images and titles to get the links*

Bibliography:  Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana on April 29, 1947. He lived in a southern community where the influences of music, jazz and blues, were all around him. This played a factor in his writing development but he also attributes his military service as a young adult that inspired many of his poems. It was in Vietnam that he became a correspondent for the military newspaper, __The Southern Cross__. Komunyakaa would, later on, write about his time at war, earning him a Bronze Star.

After leaving the war in 1970, Komunyakaa went to the University of Colorado. He failed at a writers’ workshop he started that consisted of short stories, but did not stop there. Komunyakaa has gone on to write more stories such as, “ Dien Cai Dau,” “Talking Dirty to the Gods,” “Pleasure dome.” However, what Komunyakaa is mostly known for are his poems that explore race, war, and music that open up about his personal experiences. This allowed him to become chairman of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and earned him the 2011 [|Wallace Stevens Award], the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize from the Université de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Komunyakaa continues to write and expresses himself today.

Work cited https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/yusef-komunyakaa http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/yusef-komunyakaa http://www.julietvanotteren.com/

= = =[|Facing it]= My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I turn that way--I'm inside <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the Vietnam Veterans Memorial <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">again, depending on the light <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">to make a difference. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I go down the 58,022 names, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">half-expecting to find <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">my own in letters like smoke. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I touch the name Andrew Johnson <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I see the booby trap's white flash. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Names shimmer on a woman's blouse <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">but when she walks away <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">the names stay on the wall. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">wings cutting across my stare. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The sky. A plane in the sky. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">A white vet's image floats <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">closer to me, then his pale eyes <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">look through mine. I'm a window. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">He's lost his right arm <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">inside the stone. In the black mirror <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">a woman's trying to erase names: <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5;">No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Response: In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, Facing it, his main focus is imagery. The reader can see vividly what he is experiencing and is given a more open insight into his perceptions. Right away the reader knows that the speaker is at the V <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">ietnam Veterans Memorial. The first stanza personally revealed the most to me as it can be applied throughout the entire poem. The speaker says, “My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite,” which shows how he feels a part of the wall and shows the relationship with himself as well as what the wall of names represents. Then, with the phrase, “Dammit: no tears,” it makes the tone tense as he is trying to hold it together. But what gives this poem the overall dark theme is the truth, the “realness” of it all because the author has actually experienced the Vietnam war and this poem can easily be his own thoughts. It is this sense of “realness” that adds more pain because I know, especially living in America where our troops are honored, that they, like this speaker, can experience flashbacks from the war and continue to grieve for their lost companions. Then, as the speaker is looking through the names, he expects to see his own name as if he feels he should be dead along with these fallen soldiers or as if he is dead on the inside. This is even more supported as he sees himself through the granite as another man who lost an arm. Finally, towards the end of the poem, there is a seemingly flawless shift in tone where he begins to come back to the present as the speaker pays more attention to his surroundings and points them out, such as the sky. Then, he even acknowledges the fact that he can break free from this wall and the memories with a simple turn. This is also true with the woman he sees with the names on her dress that remains on the wall but leave her as she walks away. Next he sees a woman who he thinks is trying to erase the names as if to change the past but realizes she is focusing on the future and is actually just brushing a boy’s hair. I see this as a resolution and this poem, in general, was extremely well executed in terms of flow. It did not leave me with the complete emptiness I expected to have after I read about anything that has to do with war, but instead I felt understanding.

Work cited http://%20%20http//www.poemhunter.com/poem/facing-it/ http://oldironsides-thesilentmajority.blogspot.com/2014/05/memorial-day.html



=[|My Father's Love letters]=

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5;">After coming home from the mill, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">& ask me to write a letter to my mother <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Who sent postcards of desert flowers <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Taller than men. He would beg, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Promising to never beat her <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Again. Somehow I was happy <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">She had gone, & sometimes wanted <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Williams' 'Polka Dots & Moonbeams' <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Never made the swelling go down. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">His carpenter's apron always bulged <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">With old nails, a claw hammer <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Looped at his side & extension cords <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Coiled around his feet. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Words rolled from under the pressure <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Of my ballpoint: Love, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Baby, Honey, Please. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">We sat in the quiet brutality <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Lost between sentences... <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">The gleam of a five-pound wedge <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">On the concrete floor <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Pulled a sunset <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Through the doorway of his toolshed. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">I wondered if she laughed <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">& held them over a gas burner. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">My father could only sign <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">His name, but he'd look at blueprints <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">& say how many bricks <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Formed each wall. This man, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Who stole roses & hyacinth <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">For his yard, would stand there <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">With eyes closed & fists balled, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Laboring over a simple word, almost <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; font-size: 17px;">Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Response: In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, My Father’s Love Letters, my expectations after reading the title did not match the reality. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was shocked to find that these love letters were intended to bring back the speaker's mother after she suffered from his father's physical abuse. However, the middle ground of the speaker, who seems young at the time and more observant than judgmental, made me feel more empathy and understanding of the situation. The speaker of this poem may be understanding of his father, but at the same time, he still seems conflicted. He seems to miss his mother but has to remind himself that she will get beaten if she returns, yet he still writes these love letters for his father because his father asked him to, and he wants him to be happy. The author made the speaker keep his tone fairly neutral, which was a good choice structurally as it allowed for the experience of the poem to shine through. The father is an intelligent man who can only write his name so he allows his son do the writing for him. This means the son feels what his father is going through. He can see his struggle in trying to get the right words across as the father is a hands-on man, not a sweet talker. Normally no one wants to have sympathy for a wife beater, and maybe I have none, but at the end of the poem we see his struggle which justifies the statement, “almost Redeemed by what he tried to say.” It's the simple fact that he is trying. The mother’s true feelings in this poem are unknown, but her leaving in the first place makes it more believable that she would be holding the love letters “over a gas burner.” This poem gives the readers a slice of everyday life that can be hard but can be accepted.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Work cited https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSmpYIaL9mvUK8OEqRpvWICjJZYO4PNpLPHZjsl78uP5cmdLZ2n <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://%20http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-father-s-love-letters/

= = =Prisoners= <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> Usually at the helipad I see them stumble-dance across the hot asphalt with crokersacks over their heads, moving toward the interrogation huts, thin-framed as box kites of sticks & black silk anticipating a hard wind that'll tug & snatch them out into space. I think some must be laughing under their dust-colored hoods, knowing rockets are aimed at Chu Lai—that the water's evaporating & soon the nail will make contact with metal. How can anyone anywhere love these half-broken figures bent under the sky's brightness? The weight they carry is the soil we tread night & day. Who can cry for them? I've heard the old ones are the hardest to break. An arm twist, a combat boot against the skull, a .45 jabbed into the mouth, nothing works. When they start talking with ancestors faint as camphor smoke in pagodas, you know you'll have to kill them to get an answer. Sunlight throws scythes against the afternoon. Everything's a heat mirage; a river tugs at their slow feet. I stand alone & amazed, with a pill-happy door gunner signaling for me to board the Cobra. I remember how one day I almost bowed to such figures walking toward me, under a corporal's ironclad stare. I can't say why. From a half-mile away trees huddle together, & the prisoners look like marionettes hooked to strings of light. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; display: block; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Response: In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, “Prisoners,” readers are taken back to what can be assumed to be the author’s Viet Nam war days. My reaction to this poem may be similar to the narrator's thoughts as he was watching these prisoners. After reading through the poem the third time, I thought mostly about human nature and war. How each side would value the other side’s life as expendable for their “greater” cause: the Americans to stop the spread of communism; the Northern Vietnamese to unify it with their entire country in communism. But then the narrator regarded the prisoners as, “marionettes,” which made me think that many of these people were drafted and ultimately sent to war on behalf of another's ideologies. Then I thought about how I sound like those anti-vietnam war hippies, but in reality, I just do not like any mass scale of death. In his poem, Komunyakaa used primarily imagery. His imagery gives readers the reality of war as well as some of its gorier sides with vivid detail. For example, “I've heard the old ones are the hardest to break. An arm twist, a combat boot against the skull, a .45 jabbed into the mouth, nothing works.” This gives the effect of the tragedy of war. But what really gives this a sad theme is his ending statement on this situation, “ You'll have to kill them to get an answer,” because no amount of torture will work. work cited http://prospect.org/article/great-american-chain-gang http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/prisoners/comments/

=**Thanks**=

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thanks for the tree <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">between me & a sniper's bullet. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don't know what made the grass <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">sway seconds before the Viet Cong <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">raised his soundless rifle. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some voices always followed, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">telling me which foot <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">to put down first. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thanks for deflecting the ricochet <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">against the anarchy of dusk. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was back in San Francisco <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">wrapped up in a woman's wild colors, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">causing some dark bird's love call <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">to be shattered by daylight <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">when my hands reached up <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">& pulled a branch from my face. Thanks <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">for the vague white flower <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">that pointed to the gleaming metal <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">reflecting how it is to be broken <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">like mist over the grass, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">as we played some deadly <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">game for blind gods. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">What made me spot the monarch <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">writhing on a single thread <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">tied to a farmer's gate, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">holding the day together <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">like an unfingered guitar string <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">is beyond me. Maybe the hills <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">grew weary & leaned a little in the heat. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">Again, thanks for the dud <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">hand grenade tossed at my feet <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">outside Chu Lai. I'm still <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">falling through its silence. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">I don't know why the intrepid <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">sun touched the bayonet, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">but I know that something <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">stood among those lost trees <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline;">& moved only when I moved.

Response: In <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, “Thanks,” my initial response was the complete confusion one gets after walking in on the middle of a movie. Upon finishing the poem, I understood that the narrator has been to war and is grateful for every little thing that helped him survive as well as being grateful for the things he finds upon returning home. My reaction was to reflect on my own life and little things I take for granted because I could be gone tomorrow. This poem, like many of his others, had the recurring theme of war and moving on. Clearly an experience the author know wells. Komunyakaa’s poem had a strong use of imagery -- which seem to be his main style in writing poems -- repetition, which made for emphasis on the fact that this man is so grateful, and a shift in tone that shows his shift in environment. The most memorable use of imagery would be the death-defying moments he paints so visibly such as, “grass sways seconds before the Viet Cong raised his soundless rifle,” and, “deflecting the ricochet against the anarchy of dusk,” that makes this poem all the more exciting and suspenseful, really giving the effect that his life could end from any wrong move. In the poem, he also uses repetition by repeating the word “thanks,” adding emphasis to the fact that he really is grateful to be back, grateful to be alive. Then there was the shift in tone where his diction went from harsh and rushed, as he spoke of war, to his experiences back home that were calm and without haste. For example, he talks about the delicate beauty of the things that tip him off to looming death: “The vague white flower that pointed to the gleaming metal,” and, “the monarch writhing on a single thread tied to a farmer’s gate,” which seems like a sad kind of happy. Komunyakaa detours from his list of things he is thankful for to offer a theory on his survival: “Maybe the hills grew weary & learned a little in the heat,” which honestly seemed very strange because this is personification. This does not seem like it would fit in such a realistic poem. Somehow, though, Komunyakaa makes it flow and sound natural, strengthening the effect of his style of poem.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline;">work cited https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6G3Ydi1QTY54-Y8emk_lQfAuP4_dodb5pAQn3rDESQr8w4OfF2A <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #333333; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://matthewkaberline.blogspot.com/2008/04/yusef-komunyakaa-thanks.html

<span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 3811px; width: 1px;">http://matthewkaberline.blogspot.com/2008/04/yusef-komunyakaa-thanks.html <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 4004px; width: 1px;">http://www.julietvanotteren.com/