Blog 6 NC

In Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau, the poem 'Somewhere Near Phu Bai' illustrates the everyday nightlife of being in a warzone in Vietnam through the use of setting and heavy detail. In this particular poem, Komunyakaa is saying that being in the war has accustomed him, as with other soldiers, to the excessive violence that occurs often. Although he is not actually in a conflict in this particular poem, he describes the serene beauty of nature in depicting the moon as wondrous yet applying words to make it seem dangerous, as he says "The moon cuts through night trees like a circular saw" and "The moon grazes treetops." He also describes the stars in the same manner: "Hundred of blue steel stars cut a path." In discussing race, he uses the same method and subtly uses the color white to indicate danger: "...circular saw white hot," The white painted backs of the Claymore mines," "kneaded in the plastic C4 of the brain (C4 is white)." These associations in the poem with the color white tie in with the ideas of nature and violence, being the most pure way of describing 'how things are' and referencing a white-dominated society.

'The Dead at Quang Tri' reflects upon the dead as the title describes. The dead in this poem, a young Buddhist monk, a religious figure, is Komunyakaa's way of telling readers about the innocent that die and the lingering pain of their deaths upon the survivors, possibly the killers as the author writes "Captain, we won't talk about that." Komunyakaa again references the color white in describing "a white moon" as before. His continual descriptions of white moons realizes the fact that those at night do not look to the black of the sky but of the white of the moon; the night sky is often neglected in his poems.

'A Greenness Taller than Gods' does not reference white culture so much as it references black culture. The author says that they "move like a platoon of silhouettes...unaware [their] shadows have untied from [them], wandered off and gotten lost." This description reminds the reader of the growing distance from the dominating white culture and the loss of recognition of black culture; the 'shadows' have become lost. The chaos and crudity of war is again described using nature, specifically animals, naming a snake, monkeys, spiders, and birds. The next group named is the VC, giving the reader the impression that US soldiers grouped the Viet Cong with animals; an opinion making them seem less than human.