In Yusef Komunyakaa childhood he had tremendous impact that Bogalusa and his family history had on his poetry. Komunyakaa says that he had an extremely active imagination as a boy, and he would often ramble in the woods daydreaming of exotic places. Komunyakaa also explored his hometown terrain extensively, and he was curious about everything. He was not a listless daydreamer, however. He states in the interview that he learned about what it meant to be an adult by examining the issues that adults never talked about. Racism and the effect it had on him was one of those unspoken issues.