Komunyakaa Poem Analysis

He struggles to internalize his emotions, telling himself he is stone, like the granite memorial, a strong and steady reminder of the past, but he fails as he realizes the difference between him and the memorial: he is a living human being. He shares the darkness, the blackness, with the granite memorial, yet he can feel the full impact of this connection whereas a granite memorial cannot itself feel the pain that it directly represents. The overall moral of the poems is fairly up front for the reader. It is that war is not how stories make it sound, it is not honorable and fun and glorious, it is gruesome, deadly, and changes the lives of many young men and women who still had a lot of life and innocence left in front of them, and now all they will have are the memories of death and their friends dying in front of them. As Komuyakaa face becomes clear it now serves as a direct reminder of the emotional impact of his surroundings upon him, through mirroring his own face and also by simultaneously illuminating his surroundings and his silhouetted existence within these surroundings, reminding him that he stands within the Vietnam Memorial. This effect is described within the (lines 8-13) His constant turning and moving from angle to angle also suggests emotion as he cannot view the

The poem I have deconstructed is, “How to be a Real Indian” by Kenzie Allen. “How to be a Real Indian” consists of two stanzas. The poem is in a first person point of view. This poem was deconstructed in order to gain a greater interpretation of how and why it was written. To interpret what more the speaker was trying to convey through their writing.

Richard Blanco is a Cuban- American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama's second swearing-in. He wrote a poem titled "One Today" that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who's daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is.

Would you ever think an indigenous poem about nature would have any similarities with a short story that is set later on in the future, where everybody is dependent on technology? “The Song My Paddle Sings” is by an early 1900s indigenous poet, Pauline Johnson, and “The Pedestrian” is written by early 2000s writer, Ray Bradbury. The short story and the poem both establish a very determined, lonely,anxious and gloomy mood. “The Song My Paddle Sings” is an indigenous poem that exemplifies to stay determined in every journey in life. The poem is about a man who goes sailing but there is no wind, so then he has to take down the sail and start canoeing but then the water gets faster and he accepts that he has to change for nature. Consequently

Cruel and terrible events forever leave a mark on our memory. Especially, when these events are directly related to person, the memory reproduces every second of what happened. Unfortunately, humanity fully cognized the term of "war". "Facing it" by Yusef Komunyakaa reveals another several sides of the war. Poem tells the reader about which consequences, the war left and how changed people's lives. The hero identifies itself with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, mourns all those killed and who did not return. That is why the poem is dramatic. War has become a part of the hero's life, even after the ending.

Beauty is a subjective idea that focuses on the characteristics preferable to a single species that gives an advantage over another and at the cost of another species survival. Humans have created astounding empires with beautiful cities and monuments because they were the most progressive species that are able to do so because of their capacity for violence. Some empires fear for their survival, so they must eliminate any threat whether it be humans or other animals. The poem, “Thanks” by Yusef Komunyakaa, it symbolizes how humans can become single minded only driven by their own personal desires at the sake of anyone else. Humans naturally commit ugly atrocities to progress their own beauty, or at least idea of, and they instinctively oppose nature because mankind is the dark side of nature.

The speaker's life before war is left far below and even feels like an illusion. Like a "dream," it is gone. When the speaker “woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters”, he woke up to his worst nightmare, enemy fighters approaching the bomber. If we take a close look at lines three and four together, there is a stark contrast. Line three is very peaceful and serene, the words “dream”, “life”, and “earth” usually have positive connotations; while line four is certain death, with words like “nightmare” and “black flak”. The last line of the poem is very straightforward, and is almost prose. It tells us exactly what we need to know. When the bomber got back to the base, they cleaned the speakers remains out of the turret with a hose. If we continue the metaphor of the bomber being the mother, we can conclude that the speaker is being born into death through the womb of “the State”.

“Facing It” a powerful sonnet, brings both exact and metaphorical meanings to the reader. As seen in “I see the booby trap’s white flash,” (18) where there is no room for a different interpretation, but a flashback; which invites the reader into the world of war. It is up to the vet to see himself as something other than a man of war and the Vietnam Memorial allows them to release their pain into the stone, the black granite; releasing the empty pain that is carried for years. “[H]alf-expecting to find / my own [name] in the letter” (15, 16) and the portrayal of “I am a window” (27) allows others to see through the vet what a veteran took away from the war. Not all came back whole either mind or body and Komunyakaa displays this within the reference of “his right arm / inside the stone” (28, 29) and how this soldier wishes the names and pain could be erased by the simple movement of a

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am here to bring forth some poems that represent our beautiful country for the Australian day anthology. Australians identity is a wonderful thing with our mate ship and way of life respected throughout the world. Our acknowledgement of our past makes us the country we are and creates the country we have, with the pride shared between all who happily call Australia there home. These poems explore our country’s pride through times of hardship, this being the Vietnam war. And how our strong mate ship and pride helped us prevail through this time. These are very clear throughout the poems becoming clear staple pieces for this era.

In the music video/song “Strange Fruit”, the phrase strange fruit doesn’t really refer to a fruit that is strange. It actually refers to people being lynched and hanging from trees. More specifically, the term strange fruit applies to the lynching of African Americans. This song was performed by Billie Holiday in 1939 at the Cafe Society in New York. The music video was actually a recorded performance from 1959. The song was written and performed because the purpose of was to raise awareness and fight against African American lynching because during that time, African Americans were being discriminated and abused. Billie Holiday in the music video/song “Strange Fruit” displays logos through context and imagery, pathos through her sorrowful tone and facial expressions, and lastly, ethos because she won many awards during her career in singing, and Strange Fruit is one of them.

The ending lines “A loneliness lingers like a silver needle under my skin, as I try to feel how it is to scream for help through a horn” conveys that Komunyakaa's concluded

Artist, Kesha, co-wrote and sang the song titled “Praying.” In the video that she created for the song she shows us, the audience, what she went through during her healing process from the sexual and mental violence she received. Through many methods, such as religious references, Kesha took us through her journey through ethos, logos, and pathos.

In “Facing It” by Yosef Komunyakaa the structure of the poem is in a jumbled order. The beginning is not using any type of structural device, Komunyakaa uses imagery and similes in stanza one and two to describe himself and his state of emotion and to compare himself and his state of mind to a bird of prey. In stanza 4 he begins to use the structural device of flashback to reveal he is traumatized from the events that took place during war, and that he remembers his comrade Andrew Johnson get caught in a booby trap. The second structural device Komunyakaa uses is in stanza 6 which is a stream of consciousness. He uses it to tell us the objects that remind him of the war (which could be an indication of his PTSD). Lastly he uses the structural device of order of ideas to describe to us what he believes is happening and him coming back to reality about the actual occurring events, which further proves to us that he is traumatized mentally from what has occured in his past.

In the poem “Passed On” by Carole Satymurti, the speaker tells a story almost as in a novel of their mother and how she left them a box of index cards with advice on life when she died. The speaker’s gender seems to be female. In the poem, the poet presents the theme of growing up and becoming one’s own person through the maturation and acceptance process. She personifies the index cards themselves, comparing them to her mother. They also characterize the speaker and her mother and create a mood of sadness and longing, implying that perhaps the mother has been dead for some time, but the speaker has never truly accepted this.

When faced with the countless problems of war including death, disease, sorrow, and loss, soldiers develop and intense bond between one another as they seek support in one another. A brotherhood is formed among these soldiers who rely on one another for protection and companionship amid a time in their lives where they are faced with the constant threat of death and violence everyday of their lives. But what happens to them after the war? In After the War, poet brings awareness to how the war-torn soldier attempts to reestablish their self in a society they have been isolated from for so many years through use of free verse and repetitive phrases, which further reinforces the theme throughout the poem.