Henry Reed and Yusef Komunyakaa on War

Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It” is an excellent companion to the Henry Reed war poems discussed here Sept. 6 and 8.  Here are all three poems:

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa : The Poetry Foundation

"Judging Distances" by Henry Reed

"Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed

In the literal, primary, temporal moment of "Facing It," the speaker is a black Vietnam vet standing at the Vietnam Veterans’ memorial wall in Washington, D.C.  But his images morph as he becomes more and more involved in the names and memories he sees etched in stone. The mind of Komunyakaa’s speaker slides in and out of past and present settings, in and out of reality, whatever that might be--there are mirages.

This shape-shifting forces us out of the comfort of our own selves, out of our of linear rationality, and into the consciousness of the speaker. We experience his psyche as it absorbs scenes and images, without clear, neat transitions. Staying tuned to that channel, or mix of channels, might require at least a second reading, but of course that’s true of any poem that’s worth much. 
 

In each of Henry Reed’s poems, there are actual changes of speakers, without clear notation by word or punctuation; but I think most readers will see what’s going on if they give it a second, slower effort. Even though the young speakers are not presently under fire, Reed’s two recruits are stunned, dazed, and more or less brutalized by the mechanization in military thinking. 

Both of Reed’s poems present training for war as the enemy of beauty, sensitivity, sensuousness, love, and a sense of belonging. Flowers, bees, and human sexuality are presented as the opposites of war—and they are war’s victims, before a shot is ever fired. The drill sergeant’s instructions might be clear; they might even seem rational compared to the recruit’s daydreaming. But the sergeants' words are also as cold and hard as the machinery they describe.

Similarly, Komunyakaa’s speaker is adrift, mesmerized by the surreal contrast between a cold, stone monument and the human flesh, the life stories, the monument tries to honor. So it’s fitting that we readers are dragged into the speaker’s daze if we are to move even an inch toward understanding his experience with the monument. Komunyakaa makes us participate in a state of mind that is perhaps beyond our capacity for empathy. 

 

The three poems present complex psychological situations, so it makes sense that confusion might be part of our reading experience. Preparing for or participating in combat, or trying to make sense of a connection between actual war and a stone memorial—those are complex experiences that we should hope to understand as much as any bystander can.  

Henry Reed's "Naming of Parts" and the Importance of Bees

"Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed

Yesterday I came across some bees. It happened because they were sluggish.  Or dying. They were barely moving on these flowers that camouflaged them so well. What do I know about bees? Maybe they just sit, barely moving, on a flower, for some reason only naturalists know. Maybe this is the bees’ lazy cycle. Nap time for bees. Other animals do it.  

So I googled some phrase like “lazy bees”—actually, I think it was “bees in September”—which took me to the link you find here.  I’d heard about bees being in trouble a couple of years ago, then it slipped from my attention.

Bees Dying at Alarming Rates - CBS News Video

Another question arises. What do bees have to do with poetry? Then I remembered “Naming of Parts,” by Henry Reed (British, 1914-1986).  I’ve been away from the poem for several years, but I still find it brutally subtle (oxymoron intended), at least compared to most anti-war poems, which lay the message on thick. Less really is More, most of the time.

In the fog of memory, I think “Naming of Parts” worked well at showing students how kinds of language can be so different, can convey character and different ways of being in the world.

Here are two speakers, a military instructor and a newbie at some stage of rifle training. His thoughts drift in response to the spoken words of the instructor, who apparently has no sense that his words are numbingly rote and cold at the denotative level, but also vaguely sexual in their connotations. 

If this poem doesn’t illustrate that how we say things is as important as what we say, then maybe we’ll never get beyond shouts versus whispers. I guess I’d describe the difference as the cold, mechanical language of business, war, and old-fashioned, lecture-based classrooms. On the other hand, we hear the recruit’s lyrical, sumptuous language of daydreams, poetry, love, and longing.  Each language embodies and conveys a way of being in the world, and the two ways are anathema to each other. 

In the recruit's way of being, the widespread death of bees would matter, on aesthetic grounds, long before the bee apocalypse affected his food supply. One could almost wonder if seeing and preserving beauty are matters of survival.

"Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed

  

Bees Dying at Alarming Rates - CBS News Video

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