Thursday, March 19, 2009
Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
In this poem you i can really sense that the poet is very much connected and attached to this memorial more than others my be. It's like the memorial is a great part of him, almost like half of him. While standing there and looking at the memorial he is telling himself he is not going to cry but cant help fact that his eyes are very much clouded with tears. He obviously cant believe all the pain and memories that's rushing through his body. "I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke", seems like he feels that his soul is half dead when reading the names off the wall. He's is picturing how one may have died and how they may have felt during their time of dead. But what i am most confused about is "Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky", what exactly does he mean by those few lines?
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Yes, you're sensing the ambiguity in the imagery. what's interesting about the simile in the first image you quote--not just his name, but his name "like smoke"; of course, literally, this may refer to white lettering on the black granite, but, what's the imaginative/symbolic valence, in the context of the poem's (larger) meaning?
ReplyDeleteThose other lines--first consider what they might be at the literal level, then how they might connect with the extra-literal, symbolic patterns threading through the poem (most of the mystical resonance of the imagery derives from reflections in the granite). The reference to the birds flight as "brushstrokes" is metaphorical (associated with art, perhaps calligraphy)--but how does this connect with other image patterns? perhaps he's hinting at something about the value or responsibility of art? In what sense, given the larger context of the poem? Note also the color of the wings, and that they "Cut" his vision--ok, attitude is everythig, here; the state of mind effects imaginative perception...
"Brushstrokes" connotes an ideogrammatic writing system that contrasts/competes with the alphabetic one in which Komuyakaa's name appears like smoke. "Smoke" signals the red bird's wings, like fire, like tracers, that "flash" across the sky. The poet's frame of reference returns--in flashback--to combat in the jungles of Vietnam. A series of antitheses stake out the poem: Roman alphabet/ ideograms; present/past; memorial/memory; war/ peace.
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