Blog 6 CT

While many movies and novels portray the U.S. army as one “team” during the Vietnam War, Komunyakaa shows us otherwise. In his poem Tu Do Street he shows us just how segregated it was at the time. He shows us how nothing has changed just because they are on the same side for the war. Even the Vietnamese have grown accustomed. “America pushes through the membrane of mist and smoke, and I’m only a small boy again in Boglusa. White only signs and Hank Snow.” While all these men fought on the same side during the war it goes back to the way it was before when they all return. For many it meant nothing to them that both black and white men fought during the war they still do not see them as being equal. “Down the street black GIs hold to their turf also.” The black soldiers hold their ground but what are they really protecting. All these men were once the same to the Vietnamese, all fighting against them whether they were white or black and none were welcome in that land.

In A Greenness Taller Than Gods the poem is representing the Napalm that has devastated the Vietnam land. They have destroyed everything this land has made with this chemical that is driving out everyone. Everything seems fierce in this poem and it gives off the color red with the fire and burning it talks about rather than green. These men wish they could move like the Vietcong and are left following them. They say their shadows have gotten lost and I took this as meaning they have lost track of where they are no longer complete aware in their lives, just trying to stay alive.

You and I are Disappearing was, in my opinion, the most graphic of all the poems and also the most emotional. The narrator is just watching this girl burn and did nothing about it. It is coming back to him now and it brings him down more than anything in his life. Through all this fighting he has her on his mind. Not only when he is sleeping but then he imagines just how it happens and makes him deteriorate on the inside. The war has run him down and I think we can see these thoughts as PTSD from the war. The war is coming back to haunt him and he feels there is nothing he can do about it.