Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Yusef Komunyakaa’s “You and I Are Disappearing” is a haunting meditation on memory, loss, and the enduring trauma of war. Through a series of vivid and surreal images, the poem portrays the burning figure of a girl, an image that transcends time and space to become a symbol of devastation and the persistence of violence in the human psyche. The poem’s fragmented, impressionistic style captures the disorientation and lingering effects of trauma, making it both deeply personal and universally resonant.

The epigraph, “Bjorn Hakansson,” suggests the influence of a specific individual or experience, grounding the poem in a shared history or memory. Yet, the speaker quickly claims the “cry I bring down from the hills,” establishing a personal connection to the trauma depicted. The cry serves as a bridge between the individual and collective, an unending echo of pain that refuses to fade. The burning girl becomes the central image, a visceral and recurring manifestation of this trauma, “still burning inside my head.”

Komunyakaa employs simile after simile to describe the girl’s burning, each comparison layering new meaning and emotion onto the image. She burns “like a piece of paper,” evoking fragility and impermanence, as well as the quick, irreversible destruction of fire. This vulnerability contrasts with her later burning “like dry ice,” an image that combines heat with the paradoxical suggestion of cold, underscoring the dissonance in the speaker’s memory and emotions.

The poem’s imagery evolves, blending the natural and the industrial, the domestic and the surreal. She burns “like foxfire in a thigh-shaped valley,” an organic yet eerie glow, suggestive of something both intimate and untamed. The image of flames as a “skirt” dancing around her at dusk lends a humanizing and almost celebratory aspect, contrasting sharply with the violence of the scene. These contradictions—beauty amidst destruction, intimacy amidst violence—heighten the emotional impact and reflect the complexity of memory and guilt.

Komunyakaa’s use of industrial and everyday comparisons—“like oil on water,” “like a cattail torch dipped in gasoline”—connects the girl’s suffering to human-made disasters, implicating humanity’s capacity for destruction. The image of her glowing “like the fat tip of a banker’s cigar” adds an unsettling layer of greed and complicity, suggesting that the girl’s suffering is not an isolated incident but a consequence of larger, systemic forces.

The poem’s rhythm mirrors the relentless nature of memory, with each line building upon the last in a relentless progression of imagery. The repetition of “she burns” reinforces the inescapable nature of the speaker’s trauma; the act of burning is not a single moment but an enduring state, replayed and reshaped in the mind. The girl’s burning becomes symbolic not just of physical destruction but of the way trauma lingers, shaping and consuming the survivor’s consciousness.

Komunyakaa’s choice to include natural imagery—“like a field of poppies at the edge of a rain forest” or “like a burning bush driven by a godawful wind”—imbues the poem with a mythic and universal quality. These images evoke both the beauty and the indifference of nature, reflecting the duality of life’s fragility and resilience. The burning bush, a biblical allusion, suggests divine intervention or judgment, yet here it is twisted into an image of chaos and destruction.

The poem ends without resolution, leaving the reader with the persistent image of the burning girl. Her transformation into smoke—“like dragonsmoke to my nostrils”—suggests her assimilation into the speaker’s being, an inescapable presence that becomes part of his breath, his essence. The girl’s burning transcends time and place, symbolizing not just an individual tragedy but the ongoing and universal nature of human suffering.

“You and I Are Disappearing” is both an elegy and a reckoning. Komunyakaa’s layered imagery and fragmented structure mirror the fractured nature of memory and the complexities of guilt and survival. The burning girl becomes a symbol of innocence lost, of the enduring scars of violence, and of the ways in which trauma reshapes perception. Through this haunting and evocative poem, Komunyakaa invites readers to confront the weight of memory and the inescapable shadows of the past.

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