Poem: "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa

Click on the link above to read the poem "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer-prize-winning American poet.

Questions to consider in relation to in-class discussion on language (image and figures of speech):

1) Which metaphors or similes jump out at you?

2) Find the intriguing juxtapositions in the poem and explain how they affect your reading of the poem.

3) Komunyakaa employs a tool of craft called enjambment, defined by Merriam-Webster as "the running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so that closely related words fall in different lines." Enjambment creates a collision of meaning, a surprise twist of meaning between line breaks. For instance, in "Facing It", we find the following collision of image and meaning:

"...slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go."

The enjambment occurs when the reader arrives at the image of the narrator as he turns. ("I turn"). The reader does not know to where the narrator is turning and when he will stop turning. The reader knows only that narrator will turn. However, when the reader arrives at the beginning of the next line, she sees the narrator's direction: "this way - the stone lets me go." Though the reader does not know the direction in literal terms, she understands that the narrator no longer sees himself in the stone, the reflection has disappeared (the stone lets me go) as he has finished "the turn" that started in the previous line. What's most important here is that the enjambed lines take the reader on the same trip at the narrator. The narrator turns, therefore, the reader will turn too.

If the poet had NOT used enjambment and deleted the line break, then the surprise collision of meaning would have been missed. "I turn this way -- the stone lets me go."


Which other lines use enjambment in the Komunyakaa poem?