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Yusef Komunyakaa's Facing It

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In Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Facing It”, he uses a regretful tone to successfully express the speaker’s memories of the Vietnam War. The poem starts out with the speaker looking at the memorial “My black face fades, hiding inside the granite.” (1), which helps visualize for the audience that the speaker is African American. However, this line is meaningful because it shows how he saw all the casualties that came out of the war, on the memorial, and visualizes the speakers hatred for the war. Later it becomes more evident that he was part of the war and how this caused the speaker’s ambivalence to surviving. As these emotions become more evident, the man states, “I said I wouldn’t dammit: No tears.” (3-4). The diction vividly expresses the emotions
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Yusef Komunyakaa, the author of “Facing It,” is a Vietnam Veteran who appears to write as a means to express his grief, pain, and postwar experiences. Being a Veteran myself and having been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. several times, I empathize with Komunyakaa. The first thing I noticed upon walking down the path to the monument was how quiet and peaceful it was, yet the sorrow and pain was deeply rooted. I located the names of family, friends, and the MIA Marine’s name “CAPT RICHARD R. KANE” on my MIA/POW bracelet. This experience sent chills throughout my body and was emotionally overwhelming.

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Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem and Stephen Crane's excerpt factor similar and different events throughout their stories. While Crane’s piece is written from one man’s point of view, Komunyakaa uses the collective voice of a group of soldiers. In Crane’s excerpt, it talks more about fighting, what’s happening and going on in the war. In the poem, it talks more about what the soldiers do to mask their feelings and their emotions to stay strong and not get distracted thinking of memories of family.

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