You And I Are Disappearing
by Yusef Komunyakaa
The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.
I very much enjoyed the repetition of "she burns" because it becomes clear that the narrator is seeing this, trying to analyze what this other worldly thing is by comparing it to things they know. My favorite line is "she glows like the fat tip of a banker's cigar", mostly because it's a very clear image I get from it. It's a very good poem by a very interesting poet. I was looking up information about his writing and it looks like some of his inspirations come from the time period before the Civil Rights movement here in the United States and I can completely see how this poem relates to that and the awful acts done by white supremacy groups.
Well, if you have any thoughts about this poem you want to share please share them in the comments. I would really like this to be a more two way conversation because poetry is very different for every person who reads it. The way I read it isn't the only way to understand this poem. Tell me what you think about today's poem down below...
4 comments:
Well i like this poem. There are lots of different images that pop into my head when i read each line.
I read a few of your blog posts today and i like them. I have been trying to start a blog but i can't decide on what to blog about :/
but anyway...good job!
Thank you! I hope you keep enjoying reading them because I enjoy writing them. All you need for a blog is an interesting idea or premise. I bet you can come up with something cool!
Is the poet trying to express his experience from what he saw during the Vietnam War? Or is he trying to show his struggles caused by the death of a loved one. Please explain and tell me the theme of this poem. Thank you :)
I have heard Yusef read this poem several times at the Geraldine R. Dodge poetry festival in New Jersey. The second time I heard him, someone had asked him about its genesis, and he referenced this photograph, a pulitzer prize winner by photographer Ken Ut of a young girl, Kim Phuc, whose village had mistakenly been napalmed by Allied jets. http://c.o0bg.com/rf/image_460w/Boston/2011-2020/2013/02/05/BostonGlobe.com/Regional/Images/EYEWITNESS%20VIETNAM-275974.jpg
Yusef will always tell you he lives in imagery and that he finds that his poems, as someone once pointed out to him, live between beauty and terror. Certainly this poem, which came out of his experiences in Vietnam, qualifies as such.
Post a Comment