The poems in Night Animals, by Yusef Komunyakaa, climb so deeply into
the being of various beasts, from cricket to leopard to snowy owl, that
we read them with an uncanny shiver of recognition. Without ever fully
abandoning his human skin, Komunyakaa inhabits both the outer and inner
lives of these creatures. The images are a brilliant match for the
poems, each of Rachel Bliss's surreal animals populate a realm somewhere
between our two species--birds with teeth, men with antlers, a duck
wearing suspenders. Both image and word are dense and dark, intensely
focused around a kind of hunger. The poet has been startling us with his
rich, disturbing, and important poems for many years. Night Animals
extends Yusef Komunyakaa's remarkable oeuvre.