Blog 7 CJ

In Yusef’s 2527th Birthday of Buddha, he shows the political implications of the war through imagery and Quang Duc’s famous self incineration. The tragic story of Quang Duc enlightened the world to the severity of the political conflict in Vietnam and was made even more known after Madame Nu referred to the incident as a barbeque. Yusef uses the image of a flower to describe Quang Duc. Yusef writes, “He crosses his legs and other monks and nuns grew around him like petals” (18). The image of a flower is positive and non aggressive, showing that Yusef believed in the actions of Quang Duc and had an understanding of why he incinerated himself. Yusef wrote, “Could his eyes burn the devil out of men” (18)? The parallel of his eyes burning and of people seeing him burning help explain the reasoning of the incident. The parallel was made to bring the world’s attention to the Vietnam War and the destruction it was causing.

Throughout the war, minority groups were often the first to be drafted and were also given the most dangerous situations. In Report from the Skull’s Diorama, Yusef describes the race struggle through the eyes of both an African American and Caucasian person. The speaker is in a helicopter and mentions a group of black GI’s that have just gotten back from the night patrol where five men were lost. It can be presumed that the speaker is white and that he is much safer flying overhead in the helicopter than being one of the black men on the ground that is most likely in the line of fire. Yusef writes, “A field of black trees stakes down the morning sun” (47). The trees are black from being burnt and destroyed by the war, just as the black men were commonly killed. Yusef writes that, “These men have lost their tongues” (47). The “loss of their tongues” symbolizes the loss of the African Americans’ right to choose where they want to be placed in battle. Despite soldiers not having a true choice, the black men were still put into peril because of their race. Yusef writes “When our gunship flies out backwards, rising above the men left below to blend with the charred landscape” (47). The men in the helicopter fly safely above the action while the black men are left to blend into the black landscape.

The poem Thanks shows the struggle every soldier experienced to stay alive. Yusef displays the struggle through the use of nature imagery in describing different life saving situations. In each situation the soldier is saved by nature, whether it is a tree stopping a sniper’s bullet or grass revealing a hidden soldier, and he is able to overcome the life threatening situations. Yusef writes, “What made me spot the monarch writing on a single thread tied to the farmer’s gate, holding the day together like an unfingered guitar string” (44). The monarch is sitting on a trip wire that would likely kill the soldier if he had walked through it. The poem also shows the superstitious nature of the soldiers in the war.