In lines 3 – 5 he states “I said I wouldn’t, dammit: No tears. In the poem, “Facing It” by Yusef Komuyakaa, he said “I’m stone, I’m flesh.” In a literal sense, he means that he is standing there like stone but still there in the flesh. “I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke”. I’m stone. But was he ? All Rights Reserved. Word count: 206. The literal meaning of this stanza is basically that the man could have potentially been in the Vietnam War at one point in his life and he lost his arm. Figuratively, he means that he is trying to be tough but he’s human so he gets a bit emotional. The Things They Carried You will be required to have two scholarly sources outside of the text. Sept. 24, 2020. Rashad Slappy “As a survivor in the war, you have to live life with knowing that a lot of the people who you went into the war with are dead. He was with some of those soldiers who died, and instead of being dead with them, he’s looking at their tomb. It's a unique idea to think that the reason Andrew Johnson is a significant name to him is because he may have saved him during the war. Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1947, Yusef Komunyakaa was the first black man to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1994). He looks over to see a women in disrespect of the wall. After all this time he knows that they names will never go away. Word Count: 276, In a way I agree with you about the names being on the womenms coat in hope that those people would come back. This show that the man has been to the same place more than once or twice. Also on the reflection of the women's blouse the names go across it and when she leaves the names stay on the wall. The war has affected him tremendously and he can only heal with time. In the poem "facing it" authored by Yusef komuyakaa is a poem about the Vietnam war which talks alot about how it happend and also written in stanzas. I agree with the entire blog post. In this poem ‘’Facing It”, the author writes about his feelings towards the Vietnam War, the title itself speaks volumes in a way to show how he is trying to let go of what happen in the war. As a veteran that he reads the name and feels as though he should see his name with theirs craved into the wall. After reading this poem and understanding it I realized that it has nothing to do with that. Each of these examples you can see that the speaker constantly reflects on himself seeming angry but by the time you reach the end of the poem which ends in “No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair” it shows how he argued with himself and he wants to believe that nobody would be so cruel to even attempt “erasing” the names. "Yusef Komunyakaa: Biography @ The Internet Poetry Archive." YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA When was the last time He sees the world in a different view. The poem facing it has some interesting sentences and I chose three of them. Maybe it’s just the stigma the wall holds or the negativity overpowering the strength of the speaker after all it is a long list of the dead. I thought the statement where he is "drowning himself in the names he sees" was a very different and interesting way to look at that stanza in the poem and I agree with that. Back to school tools to make transitioning to the new year totally seamless The literal meaning is basically that he sees a white flash from something that passes across the warm.