Poem found here: "We Never Know" by Yusef Komunyakaa
War poems are hard to do. I had a professor once ask a class, "where is all the famous war poems from Vietnam, or the Iraq war?" And I just didn't know. In this poem, "We Never Know," the setting is on the battlefield, but the emotions come out to the forefront.
"He danced with tall grasses / for a moment, like he was swaying / with a women" The simile brings together two strange situations together -- a man dancing in the grass and swaying as though dancing. This feels like the speaker trying to project an emotion to a mundane situation until we get a little more context "Our gun barrels / glowed white-hot." This is an interesting way of stating guns were shot.
At first, I thought it was the collective "our" like everyone was on the same side. And this idea plays on later in this poem, but the immediate has dire consequences, "When I got to him / a blue halo /of flies had already claimed him." I wonder if they were on the same side or on opposite sides. There isn't really big clues that state either side, and it does matter in some ways. However, the imagery in this line plays with visceral decomposition and religious allusion with "a blue halo / of flies." The image foreshadows an external and internal conflict.
"I pulled the crumbled photograph / from his fingers. / There's no other way / to say this: I fell in love." And at this point I realize that the speaker didn't recognize the dead person as a person. Not saying that the other was a target or meaningless; the other was just a image or just a metaphor in this poem -- something surreal but not human. When the speaker is able to collect the crumbled photograph, does it matter what the photograph was? Not as much. The photograph is a human keepsake.
"The morning cleared again, / except for a distant mortar / & somewhere choppers taking off." I wonder about the use of ampersand in the poem. I'm not sure nor do I want to speculate, but these images does refer to war. The day before and the next day it's war with mortars and choppers which makes me assume this is a Vietnam poem.
"I slid the wallet into his pocket / & turned him over, so he wouldn't be / kissing the ground." I feel that the returning of the wallet is the return his humanity for both the speaker and the dead. The speaker sees a dead human not someone of the dead. Kissing the ground is an interesting image since there's much about love and intimacy on the periphery. That would mean that the dead person is face up to be recognized.
War poems are hard to do. I had a professor once ask a class, "where is all the famous war poems from Vietnam, or the Iraq war?" And I just didn't know. In this poem, "We Never Know," the setting is on the battlefield, but the emotions come out to the forefront.
"He danced with tall grasses / for a moment, like he was swaying / with a women" The simile brings together two strange situations together -- a man dancing in the grass and swaying as though dancing. This feels like the speaker trying to project an emotion to a mundane situation until we get a little more context "Our gun barrels / glowed white-hot." This is an interesting way of stating guns were shot.
At first, I thought it was the collective "our" like everyone was on the same side. And this idea plays on later in this poem, but the immediate has dire consequences, "When I got to him / a blue halo /of flies had already claimed him." I wonder if they were on the same side or on opposite sides. There isn't really big clues that state either side, and it does matter in some ways. However, the imagery in this line plays with visceral decomposition and religious allusion with "a blue halo / of flies." The image foreshadows an external and internal conflict.
"I pulled the crumbled photograph / from his fingers. / There's no other way / to say this: I fell in love." And at this point I realize that the speaker didn't recognize the dead person as a person. Not saying that the other was a target or meaningless; the other was just a image or just a metaphor in this poem -- something surreal but not human. When the speaker is able to collect the crumbled photograph, does it matter what the photograph was? Not as much. The photograph is a human keepsake.
"The morning cleared again, / except for a distant mortar / & somewhere choppers taking off." I wonder about the use of ampersand in the poem. I'm not sure nor do I want to speculate, but these images does refer to war. The day before and the next day it's war with mortars and choppers which makes me assume this is a Vietnam poem.
"I slid the wallet into his pocket / & turned him over, so he wouldn't be / kissing the ground." I feel that the returning of the wallet is the return his humanity for both the speaker and the dead. The speaker sees a dead human not someone of the dead. Kissing the ground is an interesting image since there's much about love and intimacy on the periphery. That would mean that the dead person is face up to be recognized.
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