Running Head: FACING IT 1
Facing It
Joseph E. McAdoo
Bethel University
For Yusef, the memorial is more that it appears: it is just cold stone, but something he identifies with on a more deep and profound level. It is this deeper meaning that inspires his emotional response in the next lines: "I said I would not cry, no tears, I am stone, but I am also flesh. This poem shows both his past emotional struggles as well as his present ones.
FACING IT 2
Facing It
My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I would not clammit: No tears. I am stone, I am flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way the stone lets me go.
I turn that way, I am inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference.
English: A visitor touching a name on The Wall at ...
A Marine at Vietnam Memorial on 4th July 2002
Yusef Komunyakaa by David Shankbone, New York CityI go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare.
The sky, a plane in the sky, a white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I am a window. He has lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: no, she is brushing a boy's hair. Yusef Komunyakaa, (1988).
FACING IT 3
The poem's title is "Facing It." What is the speaker facing? How would you describe his attitude?
Yusef Komanuyakaa's poem "Facing It" is a brutal examination of the affects that...