"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.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Into Death Bravely"                             In “Into Death Bravely” Jimmy Santiago Baca reports the winter like a knight with his strong imagery. The signal of the story is dark and fearful. In the poem he talks about self-discovering and shows us a side of it that isn’t very pretty. Life is always hard and never easy and we have to fight through whatever comes in our way.                        In “Into Death Bravely” Santiago talks about how winter is bad for farmers and poor people. It can destroy in many ways in a short period of time. Peoples dreams and lives get shuttered during that time and leave them empty handed. “Santiago was born in 1952 in Mexico City, abandoned by parents, lived with grandparents, then became an orphan. At age 21 lived on the streets, convicted of drug possession and sent jail for 6 years, 4 was isolating taught hims...
Read more
"The Hitchhikers"  - Diane Wakoski                                              In “The Hitchhikers” Diane Wakoski describes her journey with someone and compares it with hitchhikers. She talks about her past relationship. She tries to ignore her past and move on, because she doesn’t want to miss that special person in her life in fear of being hurt again.                    In our life everything is unpredictable and doesn’t always go as planned. At some point we may feel we have everything and we are the happiest in the world, the next moment something could go wrong and eventually everything will change our lives and turn the world upside down, es[ecially if it's our loved one. Carolyn Riley’s comments on Wakoski “Ms. Wakoski is an imaginative American poet whose work, often “confessional” is characteri...
Read more
"In MInd" - Denise Levertov                                                                In “In Mind” by Denise Levertov, the speaker talks about two women being in his mind. One is right and ideal but she is not imaginative and the other one imaginative, thoughtful but she is mean and messy. So this shows us that our mind is very powerful and it isn’t always easy to make the right choices when presenting one’s self. We can’t have everything we want as sometimes we have to sacrifice one thing for another important one.                          Therefore, the speaker can’t decide who to choose from, because making decisions is not always easy. We have sacrifice one thing to get another importa...
Read more