Reviews for Empire Burlesque

The average rating for Empire Burlesque based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-12-03 00:00:00 Greg Edwards Though I'd read other books from Mr. Komunyakaa and loved every one, it took a fellow Cave Canem poet to get me inside this book. I haven't been read to in a long time. Not the way we are "read to" at poetry readings but the way it was when we were five and all the day lead up to that ariel moment, if we were lucky. What was it but the poet's voice that took me into Komunyakaa's diamond-rough stanzas? Like all things you can't explain, it was like a dream: it happened while driving and all my focus broke; I became only sight, touch, and ear: the blank strip-mall road, the wheel under my hands giving way to the sound of "Gluttony" weaving itself from one poet's mouth into my head. There's a peculiar psyche in these poems, Komunyakaa's unsettling way of uncoiling the skein of our own condition, unfolding it for our view. The book at times reminds us what little evils we do, in our thoughts, our movements, our own breathing. It helps that the poems are brief - I imagine if he told us anything else longer than a page, we'd smear and unravel like newspapers floating down apocalyptical streets.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-03 00:00:00 Stacey Doucet 4 stars is the appropriate rating for this book which is made up entirely of poems w/ four stanzas and each stanza a quatrain. At first, it seems as though the author was very limited by the constraints of this type of poem, but it starts to feel as though he is showing off. Every poem is good even though they are restricted by form. The entirety is somewhat incredible to behold, but none of the individual poems really stand out. Every one of them is excellent, but no one poem rises above the others as truly inspiring, unique, or breath-taking. I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves poems that grasp language in beautiful and creative ways.