- Look for line breaks that create double meanings or add tension to the poem. How do these moments reflect the speaker's experience of looking at the wall?
- What do internal rhyme and other repetitions of sound and image contribute to the music and feel of this poem?
- What might be the speaker's goal in "facing it"? Think about both the poem itself and the action of looking at the wall.
- Finally, how are the names on the wall like (and unlike) a poem? How does the stone's surface act like a poem, inviting, reflecting, indicting the reader?
- "Facing It" is the final poem in Dien Cai Dau, a collection in which Komunyakaa looks back at his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and as a veteran back in the United States. Have students look at other poems from this book and compare or contrast their vision of the war and its aftermath to the one in "Facing It."
