Sign Inventory, Week 2

"Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa

1. The poem connotes the idea of the speaker disappearing with such phrases as “My black face fades”(1), “hiding inside”(2), “clouded reflection”(6).
2. The speaker continually asserts himself as part of the stone wall with such references as “hiding inside the black granite”(2), “I’m stone”(5), “…I’m inside/ the Vietnam Veterans Memorial”(11), “I’m a window”(27).
3. The image of the speaker’s distorted reflection appears throughout the poem, such as in the lines “My black face fades,/hiding in the black granite”(1-2), “My clouded reflection eyes me”(6).
4. The idea of erasure appears in the beginning and end of the poem, yet the speaker continually defines himself by declarations of existence: “I’m stone. I’m flesh”(5), “I’m inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial”(11), “I’m a window”(27).
5. The only other instances that the speaker mentions color other than black occurs when viewing the reflections on the wall, such as the white flash, the red bird, and the white vet.
6. The only concrete physical image between the speaker and the wall occurs when he touches the name Andrew Jackson.
7. The lines “I’m stone. I’m flesh”(5), and “The sky. A plane in the sky” (24) distinguishes from the way the rest of the poem is written through their short declarative form.
8. The image of flight or floating appears several times through the red bird, the plane in the sky, and the white vet’s image floating next to the speaker.
9. The agency of the action in the poem seems to shift from static to active.
10. The poem seems to focus on one of many actions perceivably made to the wall through the reflections the speaker views.