Poetry Reading Journal: "Facing It"

INSTRUCTIONS

In your Poetry Reading Journal document, answer the following questions, giving examples/quotations from the poem to support or explain your answers.  Remember that when you quote from a poem, you give the line numbers in parenthesis.  If quoting two or three lines, use a slash to indicate a line break.  Example:  "And you laugh back nor can you ever see/The thousand little deaths my heart has died"(7-8).  When quoting four lines or more, use a block quotation, in which you format the lines as they appear in the poem and put the line numbers in parenthesis at the end.  For example:

They whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was nor easy. (1-4)

 

Create a heading with the title of the poem.  Then answer the questions below.

  1. Komunyakaa uses the word "black" twice in the opening lines of the poem.  What are the various connotative meanings of the word "black"?  Why do you think Komunyakaa brings in this word at the beginning of the poem? He then emphasizes the word by repeating it.  Why, in your opinion, does he do this? 
  2. What do you think is the most important image of the poem?  Explain what the image means. Then explain why it is so important to the poem and the poem's overall meaning.
  3. Select three other important images and explain their meanings.
  4. How does the speaker feel about the Vietnam war?  How does he use imagery to convey this?