Blog 7 SAL

Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa is a book of poems that follows the beliefs and feelings of an African American soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. The first poem, We Never Know, is about a fallen soldier. “He danced with tall grass for a moment, like he was swaying with a woman.” This imagery of a soldier who had just been shot and is falling in a way that looks like an effortless movement of nature, shows the contrast between war and the beauty of a country. When the narrator goes over to the fallen soldier, he is too late; the soldier is already swarmed by flies. The distant sounds of mortars and choppers are a constant reminder that they are in the midst of war. This is another example of war and nature and how they are intertwined. The narrator puts the soldier’s wallet into his pocket as a sign of respect but also as a piece of identity. A nameless soldier has no story, but a soldier with an identity can tell his story through his death. The narrator also turns the soldier over so “he wouldn’t be kissing the ground;” also showing the respect of the land, but more importantly the respect for the fallen man. This theme of a fallen soldier and the beauty of nature is present in many of these poems.

Another poem, Eyeball Television, depicts a soldier back from war having flashbacks and vivid images. These images are scattered as many of the stories from the other novels we have studied. One memory leading to another until the mind cannot keep up with the emotions of the moment so it moves on to the next story or memory. The narrator says that a man is sitting on his couch picturing hundreds of faces from television shows such as I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show. The faces from these shows represent happy times, and yet he cannot keep his mind from jumping from one war image to the next. He covers these flashbacks with these television shows because he is trying to escape reality; he is trying to get away from the war mentally. He is watching the television, but seeing his memories from the war. “The picture fades into the sound of urine dripping on his forehead, as he tries to read the lips of Walter Cronkite.” He is trying to escape but cannot because he is suffering from flashbacks and PTSD, which has been a theme throughout all of our read literature.

The final poem, Sunset Threnody, greatly describes the theme of the image of the girl back home, yet in this case the girl is a nurse. It is a poem of longing for the girl, but more importantly longing for the safety that the girl represents. “Midwestern prom queen, army nurse, now working the graveyard shift at St. Luke’s emergency ward, sweet thing for every Vietnam vet.” She is the face of every girl back home to these soldiers. The narrator is having an internal battle as to continue to fight or to “unheal” himself to see her. He can see men carrying the wounded soldiers to the helicopter, knowing that they will be seeing her. Survival is key and if the soldiers can see her then they have barely escaped the wrath of war. He knows that he is close to safety and her stating, “I’m still there & halfway to her table where she sits holding the sun in her icy glass.” Every novel read so far, has the notion of a girl back home even if the girl is not technically the soldiers anymore; there is still that longing for her.