Some of his metaphors are almost magical in their quality, their effusiveness, and ability to draw you in. It's also helped by the fact that very few poets write about war like this. Sure, there've been the I Rhyme, You Die poets from the civil war or other periods of history, but nothing like this.

He talks about the soldier's main preoccupation: women, home, warm smiles, grenades, RPG's, and dying--of course. All the while you know that there's this inherent sadness he can't talk about while he's a soldier. That's what makes these poems run so deep. I especially liked the poem "Thanks". It was heartbreaking for me.

It's beautiful reading about these scars, sad as they may be. Being a Soldier is a tough man's job, and hopefully people will read this book of poems and realize that.


"Dien Cai Dau"- prominent Vietnam War writing   April 27, 2004
Jessica (College Station, TX USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

The poetic memoirs of Yusef Komunyakaa in the book "Dien Cai Dau" are based upon the poet's various experiences overseas during the Vietnam War. "Dien Cai Dau" is a superb collection of wartime poetry. Yusef Komunyakaa is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who served in the Vietnam War as a correspondent and editor for a newspaper. The aesthetic imagery Komunyakaa uses within his collection of Vietnam War poetry wonderfully captures the explosive scenery and experiences gathered throughout his time spent over there during combat. This is a collection of Vietnam War time poetry well worth reading.

During one of the more impressive poems within the collection, "Somewhere Near Phu Bai," Komunyakaa and the speaker expresses his nighttime duty of watching the placement of the claymore mines. The claymore mines were being monitored because the enemy was known to rotate the grass floor bombs around, so upon engagement, they would blast onto the opposite forces instead of the enemy's. The poem begins with the line "The moon cuts through night trees like circular saw white hot" (1). The ominous image of the white moon cutting through the dark sky like a saw corresponds with the jagged, gloomy evening. The image of a moon is repeated throughout the poem as the speaker/man on duty describes "The white-painted backs of the Claymore mines like quarter moons." (14,15,16). Through repetition of the imagery Komunyakaa engrains the shadowy image of the night moon, and the fatal image of the bombs being shaped like moons as well. This is an effective correlation, because readers associate the night with the moonlike mines as does the speaker whose orders are to observe the mines. The claymore mines become his night. Comparisons and correlations like this occur throughout the collected poems allowing the audience to experience along with the speaker each wartime event. This is one of the wonderful attributes within Komunyakaa's writing because he really invites the reader to engage himself or her within the book.

Many of Komunyakaa's poems within his war poetry collection depict circumstances in which he remembers events during the war, and the recollections of these events reflect his emotions gathered during these experiences. Through the speaker's emotional stance, the book is successful in gathering an emotional response from the reader. The poet's ability to gather such emotional contact and responses from the reader constructs a memorable literary work. One brilliant poem within the book, "Roll Call," achieves the idea of gathering an emotional response from the audience. The poem describes a day in which a platoon of troops honors those that were killed during combat. The bodies are missing so the living war buddies are "lined up for reveille, ready to roll-call each M-16 propped upright between a pair of jungle boots, a helmet on its barrel as if it were a man" (4,5,6,7,8,9). The image of the surviving men "burying" their dead invites an emotional response from the reader. A response that is formulated on how one feels when a solider dies during combat.