Komunyakaa was born in 1947, the oldest of five sons of a carpenter. He later reclaimed the name Komunyakaa that his great-grandparents, stowaways in a ship from Trinidad, had given up. He grew up in the small town of Bogalusa, Louisiana, before and during the Civil Rights-era. He served in the US Army from 1968-1970, serving one tour of duty in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1969-1970). He worked as a specialist for the military paper, Southern Cross, covering actions and stories, interviewing fellow soldiers, and publishing articles on Vietnamese history, which earned him a Bronze Star.

He began writing poetry in 1973 at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Campus, where he was an editor for and a contributor to the campus arts and literature publication, riverrun. He earned his M.A. on Writing from Colorado State University in 1978, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine in 1980.

Komunyakaa married Australian novelist Mandy Sayer in 1985, and in the same year, became an associate professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. He also held the Ruth Lilly Professorship for two years in 1989-1990. He and Sayer were married for ten years. He taught at Indiana University until the fall of 1997, when he became an English professor at Princeton University.

Yusef Komunyakaa is currently a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

By the 1970s Komunyakaa became very famous. His first two volumes, Dedications and Other Darkhorses (1977) and Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979) were self-published. Komunyakaa first gained wide recognition for the collection Copacetic in 1984, which fused jazz rhythms and syncopation with super-hip colloquialism and the unique, arresting poetic imagery which has since become his trademark. It also outlined an abiding desire in his work to articulate cultural truths that remain unspoken in daily discourse, in the hope that they will bring a sort of redemption:"How can love heal/ the mouth shut this way.../ Say something that resuscitates/ us, behind the masks."

He wrote I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, published in 1986, which won the San Francisco Poetry Prize. More attention came with the publication of Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for "This Crazy Head"), published in 1988, which focused on his experiences in Vietnam and won the Dark Room Poetry Prize. Included was the poem "Facing It", expressing his experience visiting the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington D.C. Section from "Facing It":

He's lost his right arm

inside the stone. In the black mirror

a woman's trying to erase names

No, she's brushing a boy's hair."

:- poem "Facing It" Yusef Komunyakaa: Facing It @ The Internet Poetry Archive

Komunyakaa has published more collections of poetry, including Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part I (2004), 'Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems, 1975-1999 (2001), Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000), Thieves of Paradise (1998), Neon Vernacular (1994), and Magic City (1992).

After receiving his M.F.A., Komunyakaa began teaching poetry in the New Orleans public school system and creative writing at the University of New Orleans.

In 2004, Komunyakaa began a collaboration with dramaturge and theater producer Chad Gracia on a dramatic adaptation of The Epic of Gilgamesh. The play was published in October 2006 by Wesleyan University Press. In spring 2008, New York's 92nd Street Y staged a one-night performance by director Robert Scanlon.