Dien Cai Dau, by Yusef Komunyakaa, is a collection of poetry about the Vietnam War that grapples with topics of race, loss, death, mourning, and honor. The title means “crazy” in Vietnamese, which reflects the complexities of the author’s experiences as an African American soldier during the Vietnam War. This collection of poetry was not my favorite, simply because I did not personally mesh with the writing style, but I cannot deny that the topic itself is brutal and beautifully written about.

A prominent theme in Dien Cai Dau is one of violence and the trauma that comes with it. Komunyakaa uses lines such as “We kick / & smash the pagoda/  till it’s dried blood / covering the ground” to describe the brutal, unrestrained violence of the war (Red Pagoda, 10).  Komunyakaa does not glorify the violence of war; he puts an emphasis on the brutality of it, and the trauma that comes along with it. It is evident that he has complicated feelings about the war—lines such as “loving the weight of the shotgun / that will someday dig his grave” describe the complicated juxtaposition of both loving and hating the violence they commit (Tunnels, 6). The character in the poem loves the shotgun, yet it will kill him someday, and this complicated understanding of war seeps through all of the poetry in Dien Cai Dau. Komunyakaa asks: is the violence good because it keeps us safe, or will it kill us one day, spiritually or literally? Death seems to be the ultimate conclusion: “When I got to him, /  a blue halo / of flies had already claimed him” (We Never Know, 26). The imagery around a blue halo of flies is vivid, and the use of “halo” to evoke heavenly imagery around the gruesome death of a fellow soldier is purposeful and further emphasizes Komunyakaa’s struggle with the supposed righteousness of war and the violence and trauma that accompany it.

Another ongoing motif Komunyakka explores is is the idea of camouflage, and the connection he has to it as an African-American man. This connects to this struggles with violence and trauma as well; he states, “The red bordered / leaflets tell us / VC didn’t kill / Dr. Martin Luther King” (Reports from the Skulls Diorama, 47). Komunyakaa’s struggle relates to that of many soldiers of colors; is it correct to kill in the name of a country that is racist or biased towards them, even if they are protecting others? I wrote an essay a few years ago about queer soldiers in WWII, and many of them, who were dishonorably discharged once their sexuality came out at the end of the war, had similar struggles with whether what they did was right. Soldiers in the Vietnam War had to often use camouflage to blend in with their surroundings, specifically the dark mud, and Komunyakka grapples with this when he writes “Chameleons / crawled our spines, changing from day / to night” (Camouflaging the Chimera, 3). He is already dark-skinned, but around him, his compatriots camouflage and turn from light day to dark night to hide from the Viet Cong—is it camouflage for him, or something else? Is the act of being a soldier itself a camouflage for Komunyakaa? He does express solidarity with other soldiers of color, and hints at similar experiences with the army: “The black sergeant first class / who stalled us on the ramp / didn’t kiss the ground either” (To have danced with Death, 46). Komunyakaa’s overall exploration of camouflage and race is well done, and quite interesting to read about.

A final theme that he explores that I personally enjoyed the most is about his relationship with nature, and how the violence of war can reflect violence in nature. For example, when discussing a woman who burns to death during the war, he writes, “She burns like a field of poppies at the edge of a rainforest” (You and I are Disappearing, 17). Her burning death is equated to something beautiful: a resplendent field of red poppies. In another poem, when discussing the jungle that the war is waged in, he writes:

Spiders mend webs we marched into.

Monkeys jabber in flame trees,

dancing on the limbs to make

fire colored petals fall. Torch birds

burn through the dark green day.

— A Greenness Taller Than Gods, 11

The jungle is beautiful in his poem, yet deadly. It is burning, fire colored petals falling and torch birds burning, but it is nevertheless a thing of immortality. Komunyakaa uses his poetry to explore the impact of the war on nature and the world around them: nothing is unaffected. Of his fellow soldiers, he writes: “The five men breathe like a wave / of cicadas their bowed heads / filled with splintered starlight”  (Fragging, 16). The soldiers are filled with splintered starlight, a metaphor used to represent the explosions of war that fill them up over time. Komunyakaa takes something neutral and beautiful, nature, and pairs with with something objectively horrifying, war, to truly juxtapose the two and emphasize how terrible war is.

Komunyakaa’s poetry overall is well-written, with strong nature-related and violent imagery to emphasize the difficulties and trauma of war, further compounded by his experience as a black man in the military. He has strong use of imagery and metaphor, and connects strongly to the metaphors he has running through the piece. It is not my personal favorite piece of work, but that does not make it bad—it is simply a preference.