Reflection and memory in Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing it"

¶ … Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing it," the narrator describes the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. The memorial in Washington, D.C. is a long piece of black stone engraved with the names of veterans. For each viewer, the memorial means something different. However, the narrator of the poem points out that for every visitor the memorial becomes a mirror as well as a repository of memories. Each viewer will see himself or herself in the black stone. The black stone is in fact literally a mirror, its surface is shiny and reflective. For instance, the narrator notes, "My clouded reflection eyes me...In the black mirror." At one point, the narrator also feels like a "window" through which one of the fallen soldiers expresses himself. Imagery of reflection and mirroring continue throughout "Facing it," and is one of the poem's main motifs.

The poet also plays with a figure of speech, "trying to erase names." When the narrator notices a woman's reflection in the stone, it looks as if she is trying to "erase names." To erase names would be to forget those who lost their lives in the war. Such clouded imagery pervades the poem. The words "fades," "clouded," and "floats" all connote the ghostlike presence of dead veterans at the memorial. Their names are engraved as if on a tombstone. In fact, the woman the narrator sees actually brushes her boy's hair. Bringing her young boy suggests that the memory of the fallen soldiers will indeed live on, as those names will echo throughout time.