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“Facing It” Introduction
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Yusef Komunyakaa published "Facing It" in his 1988 collection Dien Cai Dau. Komunyakaa was inspired to write the poem following a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial some 14 years after his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. The poem deals with the speaker's struggle to confront traumatic wartime memories while looking at his reflection in the memorial's shiny surface and staring at the names of fallen soldiers. Couched within this is a meditation on race, as the speaker (who is Black) feels as if his face blends into the memorial's dark granite—a metaphor for American society's unwillingness to fully acknowledge the sacrifice Black soldiers made for their country at a time when the U.S. still deprived them of so many fundamental rights.
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“Facing It” Summary
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My black face blends in as if it's hiding inside the blackness of the granite memorial. I told myself I wouldn't, damn it—I told myself I wouldn't cry. I'm tough as stone, but I'm also only human. The faint reflection of my own face peers back at me like a bird on the hunt as the darkness of nighttime edges against the dawn's light. When I turn a certain way the stones release my reflection. But when I turn another way, I'm right back inside the stone of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial—whether or not I'm trapped inside the stone depends on the light. I scan the 58,022 names of soldiers who died in the war, almost expecting to find my own name written there in letters as ephemeral as smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson and suddenly see the bright explosion of a hidden bomb. The names on the memorial ruffle back and forth in the reflection of a woman's shirt, but then she walks away and the names remain stationary on the wall. Images slash through the reflection like brushstrokes, including a red bird as it flies across my vision. I also see the sky and a plane flying through it. And then the reflection of a white veteran appears in the stone, appearing to float forward as his light-colored eyes look directly through me like I'm a window. He lost his right arm in the war. And in the dark reflection of the stone I see a woman who looks like she's trying to erase the names of dead soldiers, but upon closer inspection I realize she's only brushing a boy's hair.
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“Facing It” Themes
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The Trauma of War
A veteran of the Vietnam War, the poem’s speaker visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Painful memories overwhelm the speaker as he stares into the dark reflection of the memorial and sees—in his mind’s eye—troubling images from his time in the war. That these memories are so visceral and immediate suggests the immense impact of wartime horror on soldiers, and implies that their trauma lingers long after they’ve returned home.
While looking at the memorial, the speaker is assaulted by disturbing memories. For instance, looking at a certain name causes him to see the “white flash” of a booby trap—an image he seems to have witnessed in the past and now has to deal with again. The speaker also faces other forms of charged imagery, as he looks at the reflection and sees a plane cutting across the sky. Given his experience in the war, it's implied that the plane’s appearance evokes memories of active battle zones and the chaos of warfare. With such thoughts assaulting him as he faces the memorial, the speaker’s experience in the war feels very immediate and real, thereby demonstrating the long-lasting impact it has had on him.
This impact is made especially clear in the speaker’s interaction with the war memorial itself. “I turn / this way—the stone lets me go,” he says. This is a description of what happens to the speaker’s reflection in the memorial when he turns away from the stone—a description that seems to imply that he wants to avoid thinking about the war altogether. However, the idea that the stone “lets [him] go” is significant because it suggests that the memorial has power and control over him. In keeping with this, if the speaker turns the other way, he suddenly finds himself trapped “inside” the memorial, and this undoubtedly makes it impossible for him to stop thinking about his traumatic memories, which clearly still hold sway over him.
While the speaker appears unable to put his war-related trauma behind himself, the rest of the world moves on without a problem. “Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse / but when she walks away / the names stay on the wall,” the speaker says, illustrating the discrepancy between the outside world’s indifference and the speaker’s own trauma. The image of the soldiers’ names superimposed upon the reflection of the woman’s blouse momentarily makes it seem like the rest of society is—like the speaker—still mourning the loss of so many lives. But when the woman walks away, the speaker is once more left alone with the names and, in turn, his grief. In other words, the world continues no matter what happens, but the speaker and other soldiers still shoulder the weight of their trauma—a dynamic that only exacerbates their lingering suffering.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-31
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"Facing" Emotional Pain
The speaker’s experience at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial can be seen as an effort to “face” his trauma, with the implication that doing so may be cathartic. At the same time, the speaker struggles to accept the lingering reality of his grief, promising himself he won’t cry and trying to remain stoic and composed. As the speaker attempts to both acknowledge his pain and deny it any power over him, the poem presents a struggle between vulnerability and strength. Both qualities, the poem ultimately suggests, are part of the complicated process of “facing,” and potentially overcoming, trauma.
The speaker wants to stay strong in the face of great sadness but struggles to do so from the start. “I said I wouldn’t / dammit: No tears,” he tells himself, implying that he’s trying—perhaps unsuccessfully—not to cry while looking at the memorial. He then reassures himself with the phrase, “I’m stone,” which hints at the speaker’s determination to be emotionless and tough—a determination that doesn’t last long, since the speaker then admits, “I’m flesh.” In this way, the speaker grapples with his own vulnerability, wanting to be indifferent to his own pain but ultimately unable to ignore his grief. He doesn’t want his sadness and pain to get the better of him, but also seems to understand that this is just part of being human—of being made of “flesh” and not “stone.”
As such, the poem implies that grief is an inescapable part of confronting trauma. The speaker’s trip to the memorial thus provides him with an opportunity to work through his pain: though memorials are built to honor the dead, they are also meant to help survivors gain a sense of closure, giving them a space to grieve their fellow soldiers and process their own harrowing experiences.
This, in turn, is exactly what the speaker does when he stands before the dark stone and looks at the 58,022 names: he grieves. Looking at the memorial, he “half-expect[s]” to find his own name written “in letters like smoke.” This suggests that he feels as if a part of himself truly did die in Vietnam. Confronting his grief, then, also means confronting the loss of part of himself—of the man he was before the war.
And yet, the image of his name being written “like smoke” implies that any actual evidence of his time in the war will soon drift away and disappear completely. His pain and grief, then, are in fact a kind of memorial in their own right—the only lasting memorial the speaker has, for better or for worse. The poem then ends on an ambiguous note, unclear as to whether the speaker ends up benefiting from visiting the memorial. What’s clear though, is that the experience has helped him at least begin to “face” his trauma.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 3-5
- Lines 8-12
- Lines 14-18
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The Black Veteran Experience
The poem subtly reflects the fraught racial backdrop of the Vietnam War, in which American troops were fully integrated for the first time. Many Black Americans put their lives on the line abroad even as their own country continued to deny them many basic dignities and freedoms at home. The war memorial, the poem implies, overlooks this important detail, neglecting to acknowledge the specific experiences of Black soldiers. This ultimately leads to a feeling of invisibility in the poem, as the speaker—himself a Black veteran—feels like a white veteran standing behind him can look directly through him. The country’s unwillingness to interrogate its mistreatment of Black soldiers suffuses the poem with a sense of injustice that only adds to the speaker’s grief.
The speaker says that his “black face fades” when he looks at the memorial, making it seem like his face is “hiding inside the black granite.” In one sense, this image serves as a way for the speaker to illustrate that he loses himself in the raw emotional power of the memorial. Yet this is also a metaphor for invisibility; the speaker hints that the sacrifices Black soldiers made in the war went essentially ignored by the United States, which continued to treat them as second-class citizens (in fact, Black soldiers were even denied the same level of benefits and treatment as white veterans upon returning from Vietnam). The speaker feels invisible as he stares at the memorial. And if he feels this invisible even though he’s still alive, then it’s fair to say that the Black soldiers who lost their lives in battle have become even more invisible, even if their names are now written on the memorial.
In keeping with this, the speaker’s eyes fall on the name Andrew Johnson, whom the speaker seems to have watched die in an explosion. Yet the name also obviously evokes the 17th president of the United States. Johnson came to power after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, going on to veto the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and thereby depriving Black people of a number of fundamental rights, many of which wouldn’t be passed until the Civil Rights Act of 1964—about halfway through the Vietnam War. Black people in the Vietnam War put their lives on the line for almost a full decade before the United States even acknowledged its own racist policies.
Notably, Andrew Johnson was also the name of a young Black soldier from Yusef Komunyakaa’s hometown who died in action in Vietnam. In turn, the appearance of Johnson’s name represents both the speaker’s attempt to mourn a fellow Black soldier and the pervasive, inescapable racism that has marred America’s history. This, therefore, highlights the ways in which the country’s racist legacy overshadows the struggle of Black soldiers, as young Black men like Johnson gave their lives in Vietnam for a country that never treated them equally back home.
It is because of this historical injustice that the speaker feels like a “window” when a white veteran looks straight through him in the reflection of the memorial. Although the two men share the harrowing memory of war, the white veteran fails to recognize the speaker’s pain, instead looking beyond him. What’s more, the speaker has already noted that he feels trapped inside the “black granite,” but the white veteran has only “lost his right arm / inside the stone,” suggesting that society has made it easier for white veterans to move on from the war by providing them with benefits to which Black soldiers weren’t given equal access. Because society at large fails to acknowledge the racial dynamics that make moving on from the war even harder for Black veterans, then, soldiers like the speaker are left to quietly grapple not only with trauma, but also with an entire history of mistreatment.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2
- Lines 14-21
- Lines 25-31
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Facing It”
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Lines 1-5
My black face ...
... stone. I'm flesh."Facing It" is a poem that deals with war-related trauma and the act of confronting painful emotions. But it is also a poem that addresses racism and the ways in which American society fails to properly acknowledge the sacrifice Black soldiers made in the Vietnam War. The first line highlights the way that the poem approaches the topic of race, as the speaker clarifies right away that he is Black. He says, "My black face fades / hiding inside the black granite."
As the poem progresses, it will become clear that the "black granite" belongs to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. At this point, though, readers are only told that the speaker loses the sight of his own reflection inside a slab of dark stone and that this experience seems to trigger intense emotion. "I said I wouldn't / dammit," the speaker says, going on to tell himself, "No tears." These words indicate that the speaker has tried to prepare himself to deal with emotions that clearly end up getting the better of him. After all, the mere fact that the speaker reminds himself of his determination not to cry suggests that he has already begun to tear up.
The speaker's assertion in line 5 that he is "stone" presents readers with the metaphorical idea that the speaker has literally become one with the dark stone of the memorial. On another level, though, this statement is also an indication of the speaker's desire to stand strong in the face of great emotion. The speaker wants to be as unmovable as stone, yet he immediately goes on to say, "I'm flesh." He recognizes that he is, in the end, human and, therefore, subject to all the vulnerability and emotional sensitivity that comes along with the human condition.
These opening lines establish the poem's musicality as well. For example, the very first line contains the alliteration of the soft /f/ sound while also featuring the assonant long /ay/ sound:
My black face fades
The combination of these sounds subtly smooths out the second half of this line, whereas the first half of the line sounds clipped and rhythmic with the speaker's use of the /b/, /l/, and /ck/ sounds in the word "black." By using these contrasting sounds, then, the speaker imbues the opening line with a push-and-pull rhythm that is both pleasing and chewy, both coaxing readers through while also forcing them work their way through a certain feeling of muscularity within the words themselves.
The speaker also uses assonance to emphasize the long /i/ sound in line 2:
hiding inside the black granite.
Once again, this bolsters the musicality of the speaker's language. Later, "granite" is echoed by the word "dammit" in line 4, creating an internal slant rhyme.
All in all, then, these opening lines are striking and attention-grabbing because of their rich, textured sound, which elevates the speaker's language and, in this way, conveys his emotional and reflective state of mind.
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Lines 6-8
My clouded reflection ...
... slanted against morning.
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Lines 8-13
I turn ...
... make a difference. -
Lines 14-18
I go down ...
... trap's white flash. -
Lines 19-24
Names shimmer on ...
... in the sky. -
Lines 25-29
A white vet's ...
... inside the stone. -
Lines 29-31
In the black ...
... a boy's hair.
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“Facing It” Symbols
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The War Memorial
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial represents American society's recognition of the sacrifice so many soldiers made for their country by dying on the battlefield. This, at least, is the memorial's ostensible function on the surface. It actually ends up symbolizing something else for the speaker—namely, the fact that Black veterans like himself haven't received recognition for their sacrifices. The list of names on the wall does very little in the way of memorializing the speaker's pain.
Rather than recognizing a certain part of himself (or a part of his experience) in the memorial, the speaker literally has troubling seeing himself in the reflection of the stone, as his "black face fades" into the "black granite." This, in turn, is a representation of how the specific experience of Black soldiers has been rendered all but invisible by American society, which doled out support and resources to white veterans in the aftermath of the Vietnam War without doing the same for Black veterans.
To further underscore this idea, the speaker says, "I'm a window," noting that a white veteran standing nearby doesn't even register his presence while looking at the memorial. In this regard, the poem presents the memorial as something that, at least for Black veterans, symbolizes a sense of invisibility just as much as it stands for any kind of memorialization.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2
- Lines 5-21
- Lines 25-31
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“Facing It” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
The alliterative moments in "Facing It" help the speaker intensify the sound of the language, often giving it a rhythmic and passionate quality. In line 1, for example, the quick succession of the gentle /f/ sounds in "My black face fades" makes this opening line sound pleasing but also assertive and urgent, thereby hinting at the intensity of the speaker's emotional state.
Later, in lines 11-13, the /v/, /m/, and /d/ sounds all alliterate:
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.Most notably, the strong /v/ sound places emphasis on two of the poem's most important words, which ultimately clarify the surrounding context: "Vietnam Veterans." The /m/ and /d/ sounds, on the other hand, simply enhance the musicality of this section, making it sound muscular and contoured by infusing the lines with blunt, rhythmic sounds.
For another example, look to lines 18-21:
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.The /w/ sound defines these lines, appearing multiple times and generally lending the section a vaguely wobbly sound that aligns with the speaker's feeling that the names are gently moving back and forth. The alliterative /sh/ sound in words like "shimmer" and "she" add to this sense of shuffling and swaying.
There are, of course, a number of other moments of alliteration throughout "Facing It," most of which work in ways that are similar to the ways outlined above. On the whole, the speaker uses alliteration to both carve out important words and enrich the poetic sound of the language, essentially creating a textured and cohesive effect that is satisfying and melodic.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “face,” “fades”
- Line 7: “prey,” “profile”
- Line 9: “this,” “the”
- Line 11: “Vietnam,” “Veterans,” “Memorial”
- Line 12: “depending”
- Line 13: “make,” “difference”
- Line 14: “down,” “58,022”
- Line 15: “find”
- Line 16: “letters,” “like”
- Line 18: “booby,” “white”
- Line 19: “shimmer,” “woman's,” “blouse”
- Line 20: “but,” “when,” “she,” “walks”
- Line 21: “wall”
- Line 22: “Brushstrokes,” “bird's”
- Line 23: “wings,” “stare”
- Line 24: “sky,” “sky”
- Line 25: “white”
- Line 26: “me”
- Line 27: “mine,” “window”
- Line 29: “black”
- Line 30: “names”
- Line 31: “No,” “brushing,” “boy's”
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Assonance
Unlock all 282 words of this analysis of Assonance in “Facing It,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Consonance
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Sibilance
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Repetition
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Caesura
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Metaphor
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Simile
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Allusion
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“Facing It” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bird of Prey
- Profile
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- Andrew Johnson
- Booby trap
- Vet
Bird of Prey-
(Location in poem: Lines 6-7: “eyes me / like a bird of prey”)
A predatory bird with exceptional eyesight and fierce talons.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Facing It”
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Form
"Facing It" is a 31-line poem that doesn't adhere to any specific poetic structure. The speaker uses both long and short lines to create an unfolding effect that ebbs and flows with the subject, and the overall lack of form allows the poem to remain loose and free-flowing. As a result, the inconsistent structure of "Facing It" matches the speaker's reflections about the Vietnam War, which are meditative at times and vividly intense at others.
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Meter
Written in free verse, the poem lacks any kind of formal meter. This allows the speaker to create a rhythmic feel that is constantly evolving. Rather than adhering to a set formula for each line, the speaker varies how many syllables he uses, alternating between lines with just four syllables and lines with as many as 10. What dictates the rhythm of the poem isn't a specific metrical pattern, but simply the sound of the speaker's language, which achieves musicality and even a certain rhythmic pulse through the use of poetic devices like alliteration, consonance, and assonance. By carving out certain sounds, then, the speaker manages to achieve a distinct, propulsive sound while also retaining the loose, unstructured of free verse.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem does not follow a rhyme scheme. Instead of adhering to a set pattern of rhymes, the speaker uses various poetic devices within the lines themselves to create a similar—but less obvious and structured—sense of cohesion. For example, line 1 ("My black face fades") features the assonant /ay/ sound in the words "face" and "fades." This, of course, doesn't actually create a rhyme, but it does lead to a certain feeling of connection that is similar to the kind of unified sound that rhyme schemes often lend to a poem. Later, the internal slant rhyme that occurs between the word "granite" in line 2 and the word "damnit" in line 4 gives the opening an even more musical sound. In this way, the speaker's use of repetition and poetic devices like assonance makes up for the poem's lack of a rhyme scheme, ultimately giving the words a musical sound without sticking to a formulaic pattern.
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“Facing It” Speaker
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The speaker of "Facing It" is a Black man who fought in the Vietnam War. Upon visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speaker feels as if his own face blends in to the "black granite" of the stone—a sensation that indicates a feeling of invisibility as a Black American soldier in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. At first, the speaker wants to resist the pull of his emotions, reminding himself that he promised not to cry. However, it seems that this is an impossible task, as the memorial prompts visceral memories of the war, ultimately causing the speaker to not only shed tears, but also to relive traumatic wartime experiences.
"Facing It" is generally understood to have been inspired by Yusef Komunyakaa's first time visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Komunyakaa himself fought as a young man in the Vietnam War and has spoken publicly about how he didn't write about this experience until 14 years after coming home. Given this information, then, it's fair to conclude that Komunyakaa is the speaker of the poem, which is from his perspective and marks a significant moment in his attempt to process war-related trauma.
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“Facing It” Setting
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The poem takes place at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. As the poem indicates, the memorial bears the names of 58,022 American soldiers who died or were otherwise lost in the Vietnam War. Constructed in 1982, the memorial is made up of two sloping walls of black granite that meet at an angle in the middle, where they are at their highest point. This creates a stunning and overwhelming representation of just how many Americans lost their lives in the war.
In terms of the time period in which "Facing It" takes place, it's obvious that the poem is set at some point after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, meaning that it is set after 1975. Given that Komunyakaa has said it took him 14 years to write about the war, it's probable that this poem takes place in 1984, since he came back from Vietnam in 1970. This means that the poem plays out a little less than a decade after the end of the war, when the US was still reeling from the conflict while also beginning to move on—something the speaker himself can't do quite as easily.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Facing It”
Literary Context
Yusef Komunyakaa published "Facing It" in 1988 as part of his poetry collection, Dien Cai Dau. The book's title means "crazy" in Vietnamese, a fact that aligns with the collection's subject.
Dien Cai Dau was the first of Komunyakaa's books to focus on his experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War. The book also included "Camouflaging the Chimera," another of Komunyakaa's well-known poems about the war. As the story goes, Komunyakaa found himself unable to write about Vietnam until after he visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, an experience that led to the composition of "Facing It" and, in turn, the rest of the poems in Dien Cai Dau.
Although Komunyakaa himself was unable to write about the Vietnam War until years after it ended, many other poets had been focused on the war for a long while by the time "Facing It" was published. To that end, "Facing It" belongs to a long tradition of war poetry that specifically centers around conflict in Vietnam, including the poems "What Were They Like?" and "Life at War" by Denise Levertov, "May, 1972" by James Schuyler, and "This War" by Philip Levine. Komunyakaa's work is also read alongside other Black American poets whose work explores race in America, including Amiri Baraka and Nikki Giovanni.
By 1988, the vast majority of popular poetry was written in free verse, and many poets were working in experimental forms that pushed the boundaries of poetic structure. In fact, this had been happening since the 1950s and '60s, meaning that by the time Komunyakaa published "Facing It," it certainly didn't stand out due to the lack of a set meter or rhyme scheme. Rather, the thing that distinguishes the poem from other poetry in that period is that it interrogates race in the context of the Vietnam War; whereas most poets writing about Vietnam focused solely on the trauma and violence of the war, "Facing It" combines these concerns with a meditation on racial injustice.
Historical Context
The United States sent troops to fight in the Vietnam War in 1965, at which point the conflict had already been raging for 10 years between South Vietnam and the communist forces of North Vietnam. Technically speaking, an agreement was reached in 1973 that called for a cease fire and a withdrawal of American troops, but fighting resumed quickly after the majority of American forces left the region. Then, in 1975, North Vietnam triumphed over South Vietnam, successfully establishing a communist state. This, in turn, is a significant detail, since U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was mainly an attempt to stop the spread of communism.
All of this is to say that the vast amount of resources the U.S. put into the Vietnam War ultimately did nothing to bring about the intended outcome. This is largely why the war itself was so unpopular amongst American citizens, who were at the time undergoing a cultural revolution that centered around strong anti-war sentiments. In the years after the war, it became increasingly clear even to people who had ardently supported the American military that the war was fought in vain, especially since the country ultimately had nothing to show for its sacrifice of over 58,000 American lives.
"Facing It" takes place in these post-war years, as the speaker visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s. The memorial itself was built in 1982 by the architect Maya Lin. Needless to say, its purpose was to memorialize the names of the many Americans who gave their lives for their country, ultimately creating a place for veterans to grieve their fellow soldiers. To this day, the memorial attracts roughly 3 million visitors per year.
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More “Facing It” Resources
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External Resources
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The Vietnam Veterans Memorial — Learn more about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
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Komunyakaa on Violence and Racism — Listen to Yusef Komunyakaa speak about the valorization of violence alongside the role racism plays on the U.S. national psyche.
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The Vietnam War — A wealth of information about the Vietnam War in an accessible, well-organized format.
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Yusef Komunyakaa Reads "Facing It" — Listen to the author read "Facing It" aloud.
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Komunyakaa's Biography — For more information about Yusef Komunyakaa, take a look at this overview of his life and work.
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