Facing It
I really enjoyed Yusef Komunyakaa's poem, "Facing It". It is about a black Vietnam Veteran who is at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington D.C. He stands before the wall and his thoughts fade to the war and back again to the present. I really liked how the author's word brought the image to life. I felt as though I could see the wall and the reflections in it. The line, "My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite", makes me think of the wall as being connected to the man because of it's black color. He reads the names on the wall "half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke", leads me to think that part of him died with
I have been to the memorial and I can vividly picture the scene in my mind. The reflective granite makes the onlooker at once part of the wall and separate from it. The poem is shows how the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial isn't just a memorial to the dead, but also to those who are living, I guess that is why I liked it so much. When he find's the name Andrew Johnson he gets an image of "the booby trap's white flash", and then he is brought back to the present when a woman's reflection passes him on the wall. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. I can just imagine the man standing before the wall and feeling like he was the wall and yet not. I can see how he'd feel like a window. The lines of the poem that I liked best were, "A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I also found it interesting how he says that the vet "lost his right arm inside the wall. The wall is an inanimate object, yet it also seems like a living, breathing entity. " It almost seems like he sees the wall as the war itself, something that takes arms and lives all by itself. He struggles to keep his composure and not let the memories get to him.
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Acceptance Essays
