Un postmodernismo inconsueto. La poesia di Yusef Komunyakaa tra intertestualità, frammentazione ed etica della testimonianza

This article analyses the poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa – a major African American poet, Pulitzer Prize winner – investigating the problematic position within American postmodernism. The object of the study is the relationship between formal postmodern strategiesand the representation of historical trauma. Through a methodology that combines close reading and theoretical references to postmodernism as well as Trauma Studies, the contribution shows how Komunyakaa adopts such postmodern techniques not in a playful or self-referential sense, but to confront the traumatic experience of the Vietnam War and collective memory. The results highlight the emergence of an unconventional postmodernism, in which formal experimentation intertwines with an ethics of testimony