"Facing It"
- Yusef Komunyakaa 

                      

                        Yusef Komunyakaa in his poem ‘Facing It’ talks about his own journey and experiences of the the Vietnam war and its memories which was one of the most controversial war the US was involved in the history. First he reveals his ethnicity of being African American at the beginning of the poem where he says “/My black face fades/ hiding inside the black granite/”. He talks about his skin color and the war memorial through color similarities. The word choices such as his ‘Face fades’ and ‘hiding inside’ the granite that allows him to be recognized as such and be differ from the memorial vanishes.

                        “/I said I wouldn’t/ dammit: No tears/ I am stone. I am flesh/”. Yusef confesses to himself that he is strong and wouldn’t be emotional after recalling his Vietnam war memories. These memories don’t recall new emotions for him, these memories make his realize about his little success of the war in the past. “/I turn this way-the stone lets me go. /I turn that way- I am inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial”/. In these lines he tells about his struggles of the war memories, how it is hard to live with such memories of a war he was part of that hunts him as he remembers them every day.

                        “/I go down the 58,022 names, / half-expecting to find/ my own name in letters like smoke”/. In these lines he shows the significant reality of losses and states the number of men were killed in the war. All the men that were killed have their names in the memorials and Yusef was expecting his name to be there but it wasn’t there. He compares that to black smoke like it’s negative for him. “/In the black mirror/ a woman is trying to erase names. /No, she is brushing a boy’s hair/”. In these he once again addresses the loss as a mother tries to erase her son’s name from the memorial, hoping that her son is still alive and would come back. After all, all these losses were for nothing as the U.S couldn’t achieve what they wanted from the Vietnam war and faced a lot of shame and controversy for pulling out of the war in the middle where they shouldn’t have been in the first place and wouldn’t have faced all the loss and conflicts for nothing at all.  

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