84 contemporary poetry
well beyond the horizon of their attention, and equally beyond the
periphery of their knowledge. Many of Komunyakaa’s poems, to
the contrary, address these larger ideological issues and their effects
on black Americans.’^62 Nowhere is this problematic relationship
between race and patriotism more evident than in ‘Hanoi Hannah’.
The poem evokes the voice of the female broadcaster who made
English-language propaganda radio broadcasts for North Vietnam,
directed towards American soldiers. Hannah queries not only the
USA’s involvement in Vietnam, but African-American participa-
tion in an army that tolerates latent racism ‘ “Soul brothers, what
you dying for?” ’ (p. 13 ). Psychological warfare raises confusion
about action in war and the African-American participation in its
credo. Komunyakaa displays an alert awareness of how his poems
perform politically. In ‘You and I are Disappearing’, Komunyakaa
recalls the horror infl icted upon small girl during a napalm
attack, and in an attempt to represent the memory, Komunyakaa
includes a string of similes. The girl burns ‘like a piece of paper’,
‘like foxfi re’, ‘like oil on water’ and ‘like a cattail torch’ (p. 17 ).
Komunyakaa is hesitant and reluctant to commit the child to one
image or aestheticise her pain. The ‘I’ or eye of the poem is threat-
ened by disappearance into the litany of descriptors: ‘She rises like
dragonsmoke to my nostrils / She burns like a burning bush /
driven by a godawful wind’ (p. 17 ).
Much critical attention has been given to the political space
inhabited by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington,
DC, completed in 1982. Its architect Maya Lin has stated that her
ambition was to see the memorial not as an object, ‘but as a cut
in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode’.^63 The fi nal
poem in Dien Cai Dau, ‘Facing It’, confronts the polished surface
of veterans’ names on the memorial wall. Komunyakaa depicts the
intense experience of his refl ection entering the political monu-
ment of ‘ 58 , 022 names’ and we are reminded that his ‘black face
fades, / hiding inside the black granite’ (p. 63 ). Finding a position
from which to read, both the inscriptions on the wall and the world
around him become increasingly diffi cult. The mirroring of the
mourners and visitors creates a simultaneous layering of refl ec-
tions upon the wall, since Lin’s memorial effectively breaks down
the boundaries of monument and lived life. While Komunyakaa’s