The New Anthology of American Poetry: Vol. III: Postmodernisms 1950-Present

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

Ø Yusef Komunyakaa 376 * * * This life in the fire, I love it, I want it, this life. 1993 “The History of Red” addresses the colonial violence visited on Native Americans as well as environmental issues, Western medicine, and tribal healing practices. The poem also points beyond the two traditional ways of viewing nature—as either sublime or alienating —to a vision of Native Americans integrated with the natural environment. YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA b. 1947 Although the vietnam war is usually dated from 1965 to 1975, historians continue to grapple with the provisionary dating of this historical “moment” as well as the outcome of the war and its legacy. When we examine the poetry of the Vietnam era, many divergent and often contradictory perspectives emerge. With hundreds of books of poetry about the war available at this time, the poetic narrative has become heterogeneous and sometimes diffuse and fragmented. Nevertheless, Yusef Komunyakaa has emerged as probably the best known of these war poets. His collection Dien Cai Dau is the most acclaimed book of American poetry about the war. His poems have a notable immediacy and thoughtfulness that have made the war, its confusions, and its horrors real for readers who never experienced it. The son of a carpenter, Komunyakaa grew up in Bogalusa, Louisiana. Born James Brown, Komunyakaa chose his present name as a tribute to his African ancestors, who bore the name Komunyakaa in their homeland. After graduating from high school, Komunyakaa enlisted in the military and was sent to Vietnam in 1969. Working as a journalist for the army, he witnessed many deaths and was in frequent danger himself. Returning to the United States, he received his B.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine. Having published many notable volumes of poems, he now teaches at Princeton University. He has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Thanks Ø 377 1. The political and military organization that fought against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War. 2. To avoid a land mine. further reading Yusef Komunyakaa. Dien Cai Dau. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988. — — — —. Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1993. — — — —. Warhorses: Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. Joyce Pettis. African American Poets: Lives, Works, and Sources. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Thanks Thanks for the tree between me and the sniper’s bullet. I don’t know what made the grass sway seconds before the Viet Cong1 raised his soundless rifle. Some voice always followed, telling me which foot to put down first.2 Thanks for deflecting the ricochet against that anarchy of dusk. I was back in San Francisco wrapped up in a woman’s wild colors, causing some dark bird’s love call to be shattered by daylight when my hands reached up & pulled a branch away from my face. Thanks for the vague white flower that pointed to the gleaming metal reflecting how it is to be broken like mist over the grass, as we played some deadly game for blind gods. What made me spot the monarch writhing on a single thread tied to a farmer’s gate, holding the day together Ø Nathaniel Mackey 378 like an unfingered guitar string, is beyond me. Maybe the hills grew weary & leaned a little in the heat. Again, thanks for the dud hand grenade tossed at my feet outside Chu Lai.3 I’m still falling through its silence. I don’t know why the intrepid sun touched the bayonet, but I know that something stood among those lost trees & moved only when I moved. 1988 During the Vietnam War, Yusef Komunyakaa served as a reporter and editor for the military newspaper The Southern Cross. “Thanks” reveals the dangers that military reporters faced at the warfront. It provides a bewildered, bleak, and pained perspective on the war. One might consider the speaker’s “thanks” as being directed toward God for permitting him to survive. Conversely, one might consider his thanks for random good fortune an indication that the speaker believes that God is absent or indifferent. The “blind gods” mentioned in the poem may be a version of that absent divinity, or they may be the American, Vietnamese, and Chinese leaders who authorized the war. You may wish to consider this poem in the context of other poems about...