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¶ … Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing it," the narrator describes the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. The memorial in Washington, D.C. is a long piece of black stone engraved with the names of veterans. For each viewer, the memorial means something different. However, the narrator of the poem points out that for every visitor the memorial becomes a mirror as well as a repository of memories. Each viewer will see himself or herself in the black stone. The black stone is in fact literally a mirror, its surface is shiny and reflective. For instance, the narrator notes, "My clouded reflection eyes me...In the black mirror." At one point, the narrator also feels like a "window" through which one of the fallen soldiers expresses himself. Imagery of reflection and mirroring continue throughout "Facing it," and is one of the poem's main motifs.
The poet also plays with a figure of speech, "trying to erase names." When the narrator notices a woman's reflection in the stone, it looks as if she is trying to "erase names." To erase names would be to forget those who lost their lives in the war. Such clouded imagery pervades the poem. The words "fades," "clouded," and "floats" all connote the ghostlike presence of dead veterans at the memorial. Their names are engraved as if on a tombstone. In fact, the woman the narrator sees actually brushes her boy's hair. Bringing her young boy suggests that the memory of the fallen soldiers will indeed live on, as those names will echo throughout time.
"Facing it" has a tone as heavy as the stone on which the Vietnam Veterans' names are inscribed. The narrator struggles, deeply conflicted and disturbed as his finger finds one of his friends or family members. Naming "Andrew Johnson" brings that ghost to life, and the narrator does use the word "flash" twice as well as the word "light" to indicate the absolution felt simply from paying respect to the dead. Thus, the narrator remains deeply respectful and reverential as he "faces it."
Yusef Komunyakaa: Art Imitating Art We often hear art imitates life. Life provides us with inspiration; it influences who we become and how we think. Not all experiences are good but we can be certain they shape us in one way of another. One group of people that seem to make the most from their experiences are artists, who can at least express themselves and their emotions regarding experience through their
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War Is Permanent "Nothing, nothing will ever be the same" is the last line in Peg Lauber's poem "Six National Guardsmen Blown Up Together." And it's true; nothing is the same after war. The ravages of war and conflict are permanent, indelible. This is a theme that is explored in the aforementioned Peg Lauber poem as well as in the poem "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa. It is the purpose of
The wall, serving as a painful and vivid reminder of the war, pulls the speaker back to the war. We can almost see the reflection of this man fading into the granite as his memories flood his mind. The wall and the memory of war are so powerful that the speaker must turn his head away and resist the urge to break down in tears. The wall as a
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Thus, Sharon Olds' poem progresses through a series of interesting images, which analyze the relationship between the Apollonian and the Dionysian states, that is, from the pure individuality to a state of merging with the other and overstepping the boundaries of the self. Yusef Komunyakaa's poem has a similar structure. In his Facing it, the author rememorizes an experience from the Vietnam War. The poem starts abruptly with the image