Yusef Komunyakaa Facing It Summary

Facing It Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winning poet grew up in Bogalusa Louisiana. Yusef had an interesting childhood including an abusive father, a love for jazz music, and a side of patriotism. He joined the army in 1965 during the heart of the Vietnam War. This is where Yusef got a lot of inspiration to start to write his poetry. War brought him a lot of personal experiences that he later turned into award winning poetry. ‘Facing it” is a poem expressing the struggle of life and death also what is real and what is not. The poem starts by Yusef setting the scene of him at the Vietnam Memorial, looking at the black granite with all the names of the fallen soldiers. He then seems to fade into his own death, he says he is stone but