Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Komunyakaa's "Facing It"
Written in the raw, panting rhythm of Nuyorican style poets, "Facing It" evokes the speaker's challenge of dealing with his memory of the horror of war. Even once the war has been memorialized, in the attempt to put it behaind us, the poet's perception refuses to allow the wall to just be a wall. He enters into it, trades places with it, becomes it -- flesh and granite become interchangeable -- and consequently he relives the memories that the war memorial is supposed to commemorate. Stream of consciousness completes the metamorphosis, "My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite." Instead of putting the war out of mind, the memorial provides a habitat for memory, and actually calls it forth as a tragic historical marker.
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I totally agree with you. He really puts himself in the thought of the pass. But he still cant escape the pass. He cant help but keep on feeling the pain...
ReplyDeleteGreat comments, folks. Yes, this does certainly seem to question the role the past plays in our lives, and somewhat deconstructs neat temporal divisions; the irony (if it is one) of the memento mori reanimating, rather than simply commemorating, the past, is interesting. Study his ambiguous feelings about the past, the war, its effects on those who experienced it and the conflicting feelings/attitudes about it, and the more subtle racial (self)dialogue/questioning that the speaker's interaction with the monument brings out.
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