Blog 6 LW

Dien Cai Dau is written by Yusef Komunyakaa, an African American veteran. His poetry addresses such issues as race, love, returning home and post-traumatic stress disorder, and mainly the experiences of soldiers on the front line.

“Tu Do Street” is Komunyakaa’s way of showing his views on race in relation to the war. The racism that he as a black soldier in Vietnam experiences is all too familiar to the racism he experienced in America. He explains that once again he feels like “a small boy again in Bogalusa”, illustrated by the bartender who pretends not to understand him while serving the white soldiers without delay. In the second half of the poem the author explains that the black and white soldiers are divided, and the only thing connecting them is the war that they are fighting together. He goes on to say that the soldiers share prostitutes, “tasting each other’s breath”. They are more connected than they are aware of. The last few lines of the poem are the most effective in showing how divided but connected the black and white soldiers are: “these rooms run into each other like tunnels leading to the underworld”. The author means to convey that the very rooms in which the soldiers are sharing prostitutes are figuratively the tunnels to the same fate. Both blacks and whites will go to the same underworld. Despite the obvious segregation of the races, they are ultimately connected through the brutality of war.

“We Never Know” shows that some soldiers had some humanity left in them and respected the dignity of the dead, even a dead enemy. The poem is about the killing of an enemy, but the author glorifies the death with pleasant language. First, as the dead man is shot, he “danced with tall grass” and a “blue halo of flies” surrounds him. The author takes the crumbled photograph from the dead man and realizes that he too, is a human. Although it is not explained what the photograph shows, the reader can assume that it was the dead man’s family or lover. This photo makes the author fall in love with the dead man, understanding that the enemy had loved ones and a life of his own just as the author does. It is in this moment that the author decides to turn the dead man over “so he wouldn’t be kissing the ground”. Again, Komunyakaa uses words such as kissing and falling in love to take away from the brutality of the killing, and show a little compassion.

“Thanks” is a poem that relates to the theme of luck. During the war, many soldiers relied on luck as their hope for survival, and death was the sign of one’s luck running out. Throughout the poem, the author is thanking someone or something from saving him countless times from certain death, including a sniper shot hitting a tree and a dud grenade that failed to detonate. Since many soldiers took comfort in belief in supernatural forces were keeping them alive, it is safe to believe that the author may be addressing a guardian angel or some other force: “I know that something stood among those lost trees and moved only when I moved”. This poem is important to the culture of war because soldiers hung on to whatever comforted them. With the possibility of death always present, every soldier had their own way of explaining the unexplainable.