"Facing It" is a poem by American poet and author Yusef Komunyakaa. It is a reflection on Komunyakaa's first visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Komunyakaa served in Vietnam and was discharged from the Army in 1966, during which time he wrote for army newspaper Southern Cross. It is the second poem written by Komunyakaa about Vietnam. R. S. Gwynn has referred to the poem as "the most poignant elegy that has been written about the Vietnam War."

Background

The poem was his second to deal with the topic of the Vietnam War.[1][2] He first wrote a poem dealing with Vietnam fourteen years after returning from the war.[3] "Facing It" was written approximately a year after visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Komunyakaa has said "Facing It" influenced the other poems of the collection in which it was first published, Dien Cai Dau.[2]

Content

The poem concerns the speaker's visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a black gabbro wall engraved with the names of American soldiers who died in the war. The wall is polished so that it is reflective.

Composition

Like jazz, the poem appears to be free of form, but it is in fact split into a verse-bridge-verse structure similar to many jazz songs.[4] The first thirteen lines reflect on the speaker's reaction, and the final thirteen reflect on the reactions of others; these two sections are separated by a shorter section describing the act of finding and touching a name.[4]

Context

The poem is one of several by Vietnam veterans to deal with memorials. Andrew Palmer and Sally Minogue have contrasted the "ambivalent response" of "Facing It" with W. D. Ehrhart's "The Invasion of Grenada", in which the speaker rejects the idea of a Vietnam memorial and refuses to engage with "...that vast black wall of broken lives".[4]

The poem has been anthologized in a number of collections, and is perhaps Komunyakaa's best known work.[5][6]

External links

References

  1. ^ Ekiss, Robin (7 October 2009). "Yusef Komunyakaa: "Facing It"". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  2. ^ a b Baer, William (1 July 1998). "Still Negotiating with the Images: An Interview with Yusef Komunyakaa". The Kenyon Review. 20 (3/4): 5–20.
  3. ^ Weber, Bruce (2 May 1994). "A Poet's Values: It's the Words Over the Man". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
  4. ^ a b c Palmer, Andrew (1 September 2010). "Memorial Poems and the Poetics of Memorializing". Journal of Modern Literature. 34 (1). Indiana University Press: 162. doi:10.2979/jml.2010.34.1.162. S2CID 162247748.
  5. ^ Salas, Angela M. (1 September 2003). "Race, Human Empathy, and Negative Capability: The Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa". College Literature. 30 (4). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 32–53. doi:10.1353/lit.2003.0066. S2CID 170881982.
  6. ^ Temple, Emily (24 July 2017). "The Most Anthologized Poems of the Last 25 Years". LitHub. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
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