To write is to speak, and to speak is take action. The question is, how well are we able to communicate with one another and for what cause?
Yusef Komunyakaa, elected 1999 Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), calls for poets to think outside of themselves, while retaining the authenticity of their own story, heritage and experience (Salas). Through his nine books of poetry (Poetryarchive.org), he addresses injustice and reality with strong, simple images that connect the reader with an authentic voice, crossing societal and ethnic lines. He hones this ability of his poetry in Dien Cai Dau-- translating into “crazy” in Vietnamese(Conley)--and sections of his other works, including Thieves of Paradise (Baer), to focus on the injustice in the Vietnam War, fabricating pieces that have been called “the most poignant elegy that has been written about the Vietnam War(Salas).”
“Somewhere Near Phu Bai”
“Somewhere Near Phu Bai” was the first Vietnam poem Komunyakaa wrote after years of refusing to talk about the war with any one (Conley). Its formation came on a moist summer day in 1984 while Komunyakaa was renovating his home, a new line scribbled by Yusef each time he ambled down the ladder while painting (Baer). Some element of the renovation may still be seen in the words, such as saw, shack, steel, and paint. This poem captures the unnerving job of a soldier on watch, fighting sleep as he counts the claymores and watches the base to be sure nothing is lurking in the dark. The voice seems unsure of himself; unprepared. Fitting since the most soldiers age averaged 19 in the Vietnam War (O’Malley), Komunyakaa himself onlyin his early 20’s.
The reader attains this sense of discomfort from the object correlation and narration in the first stanza: the moon is compared to a saw, cutting the soldier’s refuge; the stars equally painful, described as blue-steel. The reader perceives a lethargic watch man as he leans and takes aim at whatever. A mission is not given to this soldier, only a task. The soldiers of the Vietnam War were not often motivated, lacking trust of their commander-in-chief and receiving no support from the locals they were meant to help (O'Malley). Here, “one reacts to survive,” (Conley) fearing the whit of Vietcong who are crafty enough to sneak into camp and turn your claymores toward you. The reader sees this constant fear in the second and third stanzas: I don’t dare blink an eye, and If I hear a noise… will I blow my self away? The moon also makes an appearance these two stanzas, creating a motif opposite of the classic romantic symbol it is often given. Here, it takes the form of a saw, a bomb, and an object of stealth moving through the trees. The moon dominates the sky in the evening, always present, like the fear of Vietcong in the back of the soldiers’ minds. But a guard without a purpose falls asleep before he realizes it, putting himself at risk.
This is one of the first horrors Komunyakaa deals with from his past: the fear of unknown; the fear of attack. Komunyakaa only served in Vietnam from 1969-1970, but received a bronze star for his service of a short year (poets.org). But can a metal compensate for night spent on the edge of camps and fringes of insanity? Although he states that violence is possibly “biological” in humans, he believes humans are also able to negotiate and capable of diplomacy (Marshall). In “Somewhere Near Phu Bai,” Komunyakaa uses a personal experience to reveal the unnatural sense of ambiguity of war to humanity.
You and I Are Disappearing
While in Vietnam, Komunyakaa primarily acted as a journalist (Baer). As he flew over tragic events, trained to see what he saw and report back. Exposure to this type of writing and graphic memory greatly affect Komunyakaa’s Vietnam writings, such as “You and I Are Disappearing,” describing a napalm victim. In this poem, he expresses only a bit of emotion in the first stanza, and possibly in the last line. The rest, he leaves for the reader’s interpretation.
While describing the burning girl, he uses few classic comparisons, turning instead toward images that embody America (banker’s cigar, dry ice), Vietnam (tiger, rainforest), and universal elements (vodka, oil). This kind of object coloration allows for a clearer view of the scene, becoming relational and imaginative, while remaining simple and ironic. He uses these meaningful images to inform, allowing his work to be relatable and clear (Baer).
Juxtaposition flourishes in this piece. Much like Komunyakaa’s experience of awe alloyed with horror while viewing the girl’s decent down the hill, the poem is composes opposing images. Perhaps the most important example is lines 9/10: We stand with our hands hanging at our sides,/while she burns shows the inaction, the aw, the stagnant memory that is lodged in his brain while the latter half of is the essence of the poems; the action. Is that what the soldiers were really doing in Vietnam? The country lay burning while America remains clueless, standing near enough to get burned by our own doing? This viewpoint certainly reflects the same idleness in “Somewhere Near Phu Bai,” both showing the mistake of war. This “atypical vision” is how he forms justice in his work (Marashall).
Another important twist that may be considered juxtaposition lies on lines 22/23: She burns like a burning bush/ driven by a godawful wind. Komunyakaa uses a great number of literature, folk, and biblical images in his writing (Salas) because they are recognizable, relatable, and enduring. The bible is responsible, along with other more modern writing, for Komunyakaa’s surrealism (Baer), Yusef reading the compilation twice in its entirety (Baer). The image of the burning bush is meant to be a message to Moses that he stands on holy ground; it stands to call attention to the unforeseeable and ask Moses who stands in awe to complete a quest of redemption (Salas). How else could a writer pack so much symbolism into one line? The girl burns, whom one does not expect to see burning, thus calling the soldiers back to humanity. Through these implied representations, he relays across cultures and connects his readers to something more sacred than they expected.
Facing It
After Yusef Komunyakaa faced the images of war in his mind with his first poem on the subject, “Somewhere Near Phu Bai,” he travels to the memorial before writing his second poem, “Facing it” (Baer). The designers of The Vietnam Memorial purposely chose black stone not for mourning, but because they wanted something that would become a mirror when polished (Palmer). If not for the reflective property of the memorial, this poem could not exist. Komunyakaa loses himself in the element; he interacts with his environment, revealing deeper meaning through simple reflections. As he describes the man losing his arm in stone, the reader is left to decide if this means the image of his arm is not seen or if the man lost his arm in the war. The double meaning of every reflection shows how any experience, especially war, grips our minds and emotions stronger than we thought. Listen to the harsh consonance in lines 3/4: I said I wouldn’t, dammit: No tears. The reader feels the tension of being flesh and stone; trying to be strong, but finding you’re human; being physical, but being a reflection. He does not reveal the focus of his poem until a third of the way through because he does not have to introduce it at the beginning; like saying big, red ball, he gives you images to sort out and experience yourself before showing you the image in full, unlike “You and I Are Disappearing,” in which he introduces his memory before describing it. Each method is appropriate for their means, impressing the reader as they continue through the poems.
While the beginning of the poem focuses on the stone, the second half relates to names on the wall. It is important to note that the names on the memorial are arranged by death; that is, soldiers who die together are grouped together (Palmer). This allows for such memories as I touch the name Andrew Johnson;/I see the booby trap's white flash, giving commemorators the chance to remember their battalion in action together. Yusef remarks, “We internalize everything, that forms how we see it (Baer).” As he sees his fellow soldiers in the form of names, he can’t help but expect to see his name there, something dying inside when he was overseas. He sees the reflections interact with names from that perspective: the woman gets to leave as he does, but the dead must stay. Another woman franticly wipes away the cost of war, but only in Komunyakaa’s view; she is really taking care of a child who will also grow up to know war. Yusef says the poem ended itself with that image. He leaves us with hope in the form of a mothered child.
Tu Do Street
The public knows Komunyakaa primarily for his works about his childhood in Bogalusa Louisana and the Vietnam War. “Tu Do Street” blends both of these, staring racism in face. The poem objectively shows how racism is not bound by American soil, but American people (Marvin). As America “pushes through the membrane/of mist and smoke,” he is not just entering the bar which reminds him of the south, Yusef is showing by correlation how America has tried to press their own culture on other countries, and does a pretty good job at it. As a black man enters, the Vietnamese know there could be trouble, adhering to “lines in dust” drawn by their white customers. What’s worse is the men who now eye Yusef to get out are the same men who bore blood with him in battle. He describes this irony with the literary and biblical figure Judas, known well for his kiss on the cheek (Marvin).
Komunyakaa creates tension between these two parties with music, one of the basics elements of culture. Much of his early work was influenced by Jazz (poets.org), which may very well be playing on the “Black GI’s Turf.” The cadence in the poem also takes the form of music, Komunyakaa believing that oral language is the first song (Conley). The meter softens the topic from any accusatory tone, seeking instead to report injustice objectively, for “if one cannot be objective, one is unlikely to be interesting or artful (Baer).” He stays objective by relating humanness of fault and pain in all races, including Vietnamese. Line 22, wounded by their beauty and war, connects the suffering of the Vietnamese prostitutes with the GI’s. The reader may understand the line to mean the prostitutes are wounded because they are attractive and their home is broken when in conjunction with line 21, but the enjambment is important, allowing this line to stand alone or relate back to the “I” in line 20, showing how GI’s are also affected by the killing and yearn for something lovely in this hell hole.
Komanyakaa continues to show the futility of the war in Vietnam and the war of Race as he shows the relationships of those involved in the last portion of the poem: black and white kiss the same lover, Americans love the sister of their enemy. Why do you have an enemy in the first place? This theme may be influenced by Komunyakaa’s agreement with Robert Hayden’s poem, “The Whipping,” which deducts that love combined with self-hatred forms brutality (Marashall). It is due to hate of self that we act out on others. By reading lines 22-33, the reader sees the intimacy and intricacy of these humans who kill and discriminate based on race. Komunyakaa extends this charge beyond America as he states, There’s more than a nation/inside of us, as black and white. This is a human problem, not a country problem. This kind of hatred leads to death; to the underworld. Komunyakaa succeeds in crossing the line drawn in dust by revealing the reality of race-hate with images of intimacy and pain.
The Poplar
When Yusef still lived in Louisiana as a child, his Uncle Jessie had night mares and strange rituals surrounding his experience in WWI. After demanding his Uncle to tell him about these dreams, Yusef felt more prepared for the horrors of war (Marshall). The worst horror may be that war never goes away. In his poem, “The Poplars,” set safely in the Midwest, Komunyakaa finds himself trapped by images of the past playing into his present life. For years Komunyakaa refused to deal with his experience, but now “he writes because he needs to (Conley).”
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), otherwise known as shell shock before 1978(International Wellness Directory), has affected many soldiers, especially a large number of vets from Vietnam. Although Komunyakaa has not been diagnosed with PTSD, similar anxieties of flash back accompany his work in this poem. “The Poplars” is taken from a section of Komunyaka’s book, Thieves of Paradise that focus on the Vietnam War and are composed in prose format(??). The extensive use of literary references and ambiguity of plot in the poem shows how Komunyakaa invites the reader to think as hard as he does in Thieves of Paradise. None the less, the sense of bewilderment is still accurately conveyed to the reader, the same use of object correlation, juxtaposition, and vivid imagery create new, pinpoint metaphors to what he is experiencing without highlighting himself or his emotions. This poem specifically deals with the confines of space, time and the mind, trapped physically and mentally by what he sees and hears. He places himself with others by asking, How many troubled feet walked this path smooth? ,understanding that this anxiety is not exclusive to him. Komunyakaa continues to produce poems about the war without mentioning the war because “we are influenced by everything we absorb (Marshall).” This reality is relayed to readers once again in an authentic voice, honing in on specific images that allow the reader to connect more adequately to the diaspora of self.
Yusef Komunyakaa’s relation to the Vietnam War through poetry remains as an enduring message to readers of the injustice of soldiers and natives through an honest and simplistic voice. Through writing, a voice of peace can be heard that cries down from the hills of Vietnam and into the hearts of all humans seeking to see outside of their own perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment