Yusef Komunyakaa's "Tu Do Street" is a poem that relies heavily on rhetoric and imagery, with the diction supplying a clear narrative voice while maintaining a non-in-you-face approach. The poem opens with several words that imply separateness (divides, lines in the dust, pushes) setting the tone and theme of the poem in place. There are several instances of beautiful imagery, particularly "membrane / of mist & smoke" (4-5), "bar girls / fade like tropical birds" (8-9), "I look / for a softness behind these voices / wounded by their beauty & war" (20-22), and "these rooms / run into each other like tunnels / leading to the underworld" (32-34). I love these last lines of the poem. There's the small (rooms) connected by a larger (tunnels) that leads to the ultimate (underworld). The fact that the poem opens with separation and closes with negative togetherness is compelling. These strengths are related to rhetoric, whereas each of the quoted sections listed above relate to imagery. Diction comes in to play with the inclusion of scene specific words, such as mama-san, psychedelic jukebox, and Dak To & Khe Sanh. All of these colloquial terms incorporated seamlessly and without explanation into the poem scream diction to me. I think I am correct here...
Very well done, a good close reading with quotes that support points you've made in your commentary.
ReplyDeleteAlso I meant to add that your attention to Komunyakaa's diction shows much good insight.
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