War themes in “Dulce et Decorum Est” and in “Facing it”

Introduction

War, like love, is one of the most continual features of human life, and so it is natural that this subject would be a popular one for poets. Indeed, conflict verse is probably as vintage as verse itself, and there are representative verses from every age, including our own. From verses of antiquity and the Greco-Roman world to more up to date sentiments such as those conveyed in "Dolce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, the topics in conflict verse are often similar, despite the huge allowance of time that may have passed (Komunyakaa, 1).

War themes in both the poems

Two contemporary poets who have written extensively about the war in their work are Yusef Komunyakaa Wislawa Szymborskay. In his poems, "The Front" and "The End and the Beginning," Komunyakaa and Szymborska are direct and uninhibited in their moving and graphic descriptions of the consequences of war and the toll taken on human lives individuals and communities. Despite the similarity of theme in both poems, however, poetic techniques and devices that each of the poets used to write poems so compact and powerful are very different, as are the poetic voices themselves. Komunyakaa poem is terribly close, as the reader accompanies the speaker to the Veterans Memorial Vietnam and see several flashbacks and dying. Szymborska's poem, however, is more objective and a step away from the first impartiality of Komunyakaa, "Facing It," but no less powerful. Both poems ultimately demonstrate a sophisticated use of various poetic devices to convey the same message about the harmful effects of the war (Szymborska, 6).

Komunyakaa's poem "Facing It" is at once intimate and sincere. The first word of the poem: "My", directs the reader to the personal nature of what follows, and he rewards the ...