Analysis Of Facing It By Yusef Komunyakaa

(Komunyakaa 5-7). The poem shows why author’s childhood consisted of a dysfunctional family and how domestic abuse, love, and illiteracy/literacy affected him. Furthermore, his poem “The Towers” illustrates the author’s “dear son” dying due to the airplane destroying The World Trade Center. This poem used vivid imagery to help the reader imagine what the scene looked like during the tragedy, and the words convey deep emotions Komunyakaa and the people at the scene felt as everything occurred.

He struggles to internalize his emotions, telling himself he is stone, like the granite memorial, a strong and steady reminder of the past, but he fails as he realizes the difference between him and the memorial: he is a living human being. He shares the darkness, the blackness, with the granite memorial, yet he can feel the full impact of this connection whereas a granite memorial cannot itself feel the pain that it directly represents. The overall moral of the poems is fairly up front for the reader. It is that war is not how stories make it sound, it is not honorable and fun and glorious, it is gruesome, deadly, and changes the lives of many young men and women who still had a lot of life and innocence left in front of them, and now all they will have are the memories of death and their friends dying in front of them. As Komuyakaa face becomes clear it now serves as a direct reminder of the emotional impact of his surroundings upon him, through mirroring his own face and also by simultaneously illuminating his surroundings and his silhouetted existence within these surroundings, reminding him that he stands within the Vietnam Memorial. This effect is described within the (lines 8-13) His constant turning and moving from angle to angle also suggests emotion as he cannot view the

The novel is able to share how music is of great importance and is able to affect people’s moods and thoughts.

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” conveys how music serves as a form of communication, both at a small and large scale. Charting the development of the communication between Sonny and his brother allows us to view how the unnamed brother fails to meet Sonny at his emotional level by not understanding his pain. I argue that the text introduces Sonny as someone who “has never been talkative” to set the foundation for his growth from being voiceless to speaking both vibrantly and effortlessly through music (Baldwin 113). Over the course of the text, the unnamed brother begins to listen to Sonny to discover the connection between music and emotion. Therefore, the text argues that music is a crucial mechanism to communicate with one another—more specifically

The story “Sonny’s Blues” By James Baldwin is about a jazz musician and his brother in 1950’s Harlem. The story centers on Sonny who uses jazz music as an escape from his depression. James Baldwin captures the art of jazz during this time period. The themes in this short story are perhaps varied, but all of them revolve around some form of suffering. One theme shows how music can promote change and understanding within relationships. A second theme reveals suffering caused by guilt. Yet another theme references the results of suffering brought about by searching for ones’ identity and how that leads to misunderstanding. There are also subthemes concerning racism and poverty.

In his poem, “Facing It”, Yusef Komunyakaa describes his ambivalent emotions towards the Vietnam War of which he was a veteran. Reflecting on his experiences, Yusef expresses his conflicting feelings about the Vietnam War and his feelings about how racism has played a part in America’s history. By using visual imagery and metaphoric language throughout the poem, Yusef is able to reflect the sad and confused emotions he felt while visiting the Vietnam memorial.

Perhaps one of the strongest demonstrations of the power of music in “Sonny’s Blues” is the street revival. Everyone has seen these types of revivals before. Every song has been heard by the crowd, but when the music starts everyone stops, watches, and listens. “As the singing filled the air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on something within; the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces” (57). The music from the street revival helps lifts the hopelessness from the crowd and provides a sense of relief. Music is able to bring people from all walks of life together. It gives them a sense of calm and ease, an assurance that something is there to help. Music listens.

From the creation of harmonies to singing to instruments, music has been an abstract form of human expression. Although an auditory collection of pitches and volumes, musicians can manipulate the same notes and bring them alive for their audiences. The true emotion and energy that’s felt in music really comes from the player as feelings are transferred to and through the listener. This interaction between performer and the house is catharsis, the complete release of strong repressed emotions. Thanks to the musician, music has the ability to grasp people and cause them to sense emotions and feelings without lyrics or images even being necessary. Although it’s believed we can only hear with our ears, something about music makes it emotionally if not physically tangible. In James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues,” a narrator certainly unaware of the impact of music invites himself to experience jazz for the first time. Baldwin uses the final scene of his story to argue that music has an effect on those who are able to experience it. Baldwin does this in one single moment by letting the fixed, practical minded, “well-intentioned” narrator experience catharsis from jazz as his growing, free-spirited brother communicates with him through jazz.

Throughout African American history, especially during slavery music has been used as a coping mechanism to assist one with enduring hardship and opposition. Music specifically jazz and the blues can have many boundless effects on one’s life. In this case, in Sonny’s life, music was his only source of hope and strength to redemption.

Music has always been regarded as an art of high importance. The word itself originates from the Greek word mousike meaning “of the muses”, the group of nine Greek Goddesses who regulate the arts and sciences. It has often been used as a way to heal mental and emotional pain; “music speaks directly to the body through intuitive channels that are accessed at entirely different levels of consciousness from those associated with cognition” (The Music Effect.24). In Jan Johnson’s Soul Wound, Johnson discusses the historical trauma of Native Americans and the rage that is associated with it. This rage, as she later states, “is generally turned inward and expressed through depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide, and manifested externally within families and communities through domestic and other forms of violence” (Johnson.226-227). In Wabanaki Blues by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel we see this rage internalized and portrayed in the depression of both Mona and her mother and depicted in their family dynamic through the neglect of Mona’s mother towards Mona. Mona, as well as other characters in the book, utilize music as a form of therapy to heal the soul. The characters in Wabanaki Blues utilize music to heal in ways that parallels Bob Marley’s Redemption Song and the Rastafarian religion.

Two authors, Yusef Komunyakaa and Stephen Crane, created deep and moving stories about what the feelings are to be in a American war. Even though both stories are very different they both can also be related very easily. Yusef Komunyakaa wrote a poem called ‘Camouflaging the Chimera’ while Stephen Crane wrote a novel excerpt called ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’ One of the major differences are that TRBOC takes place in the American Civil war even though he was born 6 years after. While CTC takes place in the vietnam war. Going over the writing style, theme, and context figuring out the differences and similarities.

Ossie Davis once said, “Any form of art is a form of power; it has an impact, it can affect change, it can not only move us, it makes us move”. Similarly, The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway tells the story of how three individuals Arrow, Dragan and Kenan suffering from the unrelenting and ruthlessness of war are impacted by one musician’s art. All three characters suffer from the war in different ways, but the art in the form of music finds a way to connect them all. Galloway’s novel illustrates that art helps lessen the suffering of those facing the brutality of war as the cellist’s music provides healing of the spirit, mind, and body. The cellist’s music provides hope and inspiration to the people of Sarajevo that they will be able

A significant portion of his poems are meant to be personal. The poem he wrote about the Vietnam war detailed some of the men he knew who threw themselves on grenades and what this action means. It is clear that he uses his poetry to work through emotions and events he doesn’t know how to deal with, something that I can identify with and support. His poem, “The Towers”, that we covered in class has a similar feeling to it in this sense. There isn’t necessarily “a point” to his poetry, it just is meant to exist. It may expose the reader to something, which forces them -- and the audience in this case -- to think about the impact that these moments would have. It reminded me of Dan Beachy-Quick’s poetry in this way. Beachy-Quick stated that he never truly thinks about the audience while writing, and the intensely personal nature of Komunyakaa’s poems lead me to believe that he follows a similar rule in this regard. His poetry is meant to be about his own

As to dealing with repetition, The two lines “The Negro / With the trumpet at his lips” are repeated (1-2, 9-10, 33-34). The repetition of this picture fills in as both a steady indication of the difficult memories that inconvenienced the trumpet player and an approach to fortify his enthusiasm for music to facilitate that pain. Additionally, the repetition of these two lines implies that the trumpet player has in some ways end up plainly reliant on music. This idea is affirmed by the third stanza, in which the speaker states, "the rhythm/from the trumpet at his lips/is ecstasy/distilled from old desires—," alluding to his waiting desire "that is longing for the sea/where the sea's a bar-glass/sucker size" (21-24, 29-32). This shows he utilized alcohol in the past to overwhelm his agony, before supplanting it with music for the help. Additionally, the last stanza portrays music just like a "hypodermic needle/to his soul," alluding that he has an addiction to music (39-40). Without the music

In this essay I will attempt to underscore and celebrate Simone’s activist efforts through song and demonstrate the messages in the music about race, gender, and class.