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Dien Cai Dau
Poetry that precisely conjures images of the war in Vietnam by an award-winning author.
72 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 1988
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814 people want to read
About the author
Yusef Komunyakaa
95 books205 followersYusef Komunyakaa (born April 29, 1947) is an American poet who teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Komunyakaa received the 2007 Louisiana Writer Award for his enduring contribution to the poetry world.
His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights time period and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.
(from Wikipedia)
His subject matter ranges from the black general experience through rural Southern life before the Civil Rights time period and his experience as a soldier during the Vietnam War.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
March 8, 2017
Most days, I sit in a Center for Writing, reviewing papers for college students, and clarifying the proper formatting and style required by the Modern Language Association (MLA), as relates to scholastic writing. As I notice varying writing styles, I suggest books for students to read, based on their style. So imagine my surprise when a student comes in and suggests this book for me to read. You have to read this, he said. I nodded and shrugged it off mentally, just like you do when you get a book recommendation from the person on the train who has no idea what types of books you normally read. I should have known better, because students sense everything and if they're always interacting with you, they know you more than you think they do. A few seconds later, I glance over at him and I see the hurt in his eyes. It is then that I realize that to him, this book is survival. This was the week of the Ferguson incident and it was a heartrending time for most. I saw my students come in with heavy hearts, and I heard the tears in their voices as they spoke to me in whispers, as if I was the only person they felt comfortable enough to share their pain with, as if I was the only one who could relate. Maybe I was. One by one, they unburdened themselves. And I listened.
I never thought I would like poetry, until I read this man's stuff, my student said. And then I read his [the student's] annotation on the book. I went through his paper line by line, like I always do, looking for grammatical errors and MLA stylistic flaws. I soon forgot about that because I was hooked. It was as if tears bled through the page and formed words; like the formation heartstrings would make if they were placed on paper and given a voice. It was clear, he had found his voice through this book, and as I looked up to tell him this, tears were in his eyes as he said quietly, Please, you have to read it. I needed no further convincing.
Dien Cau Dau. Crazy, is how the Vietnamese referred to the American soldiers in Vietnam. This chapbook is Yusef Komunyakaa's reflections while in Vietnam during the war. I've seen attempts at war poems and I've simply flipped through them and put them away, so I tell you, I've never seen anything like this collection. If there ever was an example of a manuscript on the poetics of war, this is it. It is lyrical simplicity whose melancholy is hypnotizing: Something deeper than sadness/litters the alleys like the insides/kicked out of pillows.
When I read poetry, I'm usually interested in staccato and syntax, and I dive in for the music of it. Here, there were all of these things, plus imagery that stuns and captivates. Komunyakaa, a Louisiana native, won the Pulitzer Prize for his Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, and now I can't wait to own that collection. Here, he strings together words simply and stunningly:Her perfume still crawled/ my brain like a fire moth.
I enjoyed the stylistic stupor of "Facing It;" I was almost in tears at the personification of PTSD in "Losses," the quiet profundity of "Toys in a Field," shocked me; I was moved by the ode to Dr. King in "Report from the Skull's Diorama," and entranced by "Short-timer's Calendar," and I found myself fascinated by how my students all seemed to be drawn to the race discrimination themes embedded in "Tu Do Street" and "Hanoi Hannah." I could go on and on about this collection because this is how you talk about war, survival, and race issues in sensory detail.
The themes and setting in this chapbook reminded me of Robert Butler's short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and I read it in the same way I read that one, in one sitting, my thoughts buried in it as everything else was cast aside. I must say that my favorite was the plain personification of survival in "Night Muse & Mortar Round:"
I never thought I would like poetry, until I read this man's stuff, my student said. And then I read his [the student's] annotation on the book. I went through his paper line by line, like I always do, looking for grammatical errors and MLA stylistic flaws. I soon forgot about that because I was hooked. It was as if tears bled through the page and formed words; like the formation heartstrings would make if they were placed on paper and given a voice. It was clear, he had found his voice through this book, and as I looked up to tell him this, tears were in his eyes as he said quietly, Please, you have to read it. I needed no further convincing.
Dien Cau Dau. Crazy, is how the Vietnamese referred to the American soldiers in Vietnam. This chapbook is Yusef Komunyakaa's reflections while in Vietnam during the war. I've seen attempts at war poems and I've simply flipped through them and put them away, so I tell you, I've never seen anything like this collection. If there ever was an example of a manuscript on the poetics of war, this is it. It is lyrical simplicity whose melancholy is hypnotizing: Something deeper than sadness/litters the alleys like the insides/kicked out of pillows.
When I read poetry, I'm usually interested in staccato and syntax, and I dive in for the music of it. Here, there were all of these things, plus imagery that stuns and captivates. Komunyakaa, a Louisiana native, won the Pulitzer Prize for his Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, and now I can't wait to own that collection. Here, he strings together words simply and stunningly:Her perfume still crawled/ my brain like a fire moth.
I enjoyed the stylistic stupor of "Facing It;" I was almost in tears at the personification of PTSD in "Losses," the quiet profundity of "Toys in a Field," shocked me; I was moved by the ode to Dr. King in "Report from the Skull's Diorama," and entranced by "Short-timer's Calendar," and I found myself fascinated by how my students all seemed to be drawn to the race discrimination themes embedded in "Tu Do Street" and "Hanoi Hannah." I could go on and on about this collection because this is how you talk about war, survival, and race issues in sensory detail.
The themes and setting in this chapbook reminded me of Robert Butler's short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and I read it in the same way I read that one, in one sitting, my thoughts buried in it as everything else was cast aside. I must say that my favorite was the plain personification of survival in "Night Muse & Mortar Round:"
She shows up in every war.
Basically the same, maybe
her flowing white gown's a little less
erotic & she's more desperate.
She's always near a bridge.
This time the Perfume River.
You trace the curve in the road
& there she is
trying to flag down your jeep,
but you're a quarter-mile away
when you slam on the brakes.
Sgt. Jackson says, "What the hell
you think you're doing, Jim?"
& Lt. Adonis riding shotgun
yells, "Court-martial."
When you finally drive back
she's gone, just a feeling
left in the night air.
Then you hear the blast
rock the trees & stars
where you would've been that moment.
November 16, 2025
Yusef Komunyakaa told me it took him seventeen years to broach the subject of his service in the Vietnam War. He had just finished reading the poem "Thanks" to an audience in the Czech Republic and soon it was my turn to go on. I was there to read my poems about love. But it is his love poem to a tree that saved his life in the Vietnam War that I am remembering today. It begins, simply and enough and perfectly with these words:
Thanks for the tree
between me & a sniper's bullet.
What the Czechs made of it, I don't remember. But I was struck then and still am by its quiet power. And the modesty of this man who hadn't brought any of his books with him (he apologized).
This collection of poetry (which means "crazy") is not just for readers who are crazy about poetry. In fact, I'd recommend it to many who are not. If you're into pretty flower poems from someone's visit to the south of France or the mental gymnastics of writers who show off how obscure they can be (though they haven't any idea themselves what their point is), then pick another book. This one is in another league all its own. Give it a try. How many poets do you know with Pulitzers or Bronze Stars? This African American poet earned both.
Thanks for the tree
between me & a sniper's bullet.
What the Czechs made of it, I don't remember. But I was struck then and still am by its quiet power. And the modesty of this man who hadn't brought any of his books with him (he apologized).
This collection of poetry (which means "crazy") is not just for readers who are crazy about poetry. In fact, I'd recommend it to many who are not. If you're into pretty flower poems from someone's visit to the south of France or the mental gymnastics of writers who show off how obscure they can be (though they haven't any idea themselves what their point is), then pick another book. This one is in another league all its own. Give it a try. How many poets do you know with Pulitzers or Bronze Stars? This African American poet earned both.
April 27, 2015
This coming Thursday marks the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of the Vietnamese-American War. For me and for other diasporic Vietnamese like me, this date is especially significant, as it stakes out not just a traumatic event in our family histories but also a turning point: April 30, 1975 was the calendar date on which our families were reborn, redefined, translated, transmuted into English speakers, America dwellers, U.S. citizens.
On the back of this book, there is a blurb written by the late American poet William Matthews: "The best writing we've had from the long war in Vietnam has been prose so far. Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau changes that." Presumably, this quotation was elicited from Matthews around the time of Dien Cai Dau's first printing, in 1988. Since that time, it's safe to say the genre of Vietnam-War-related poetry has radically changed, growing broader, deeper, and more complex, to the point where Matthews's quote now seems a relic of a different geological age.
When I was growing up in the American Midwest in the '80s and '90s, it seemed that the predominant narrative about the Vietnam War in U.S. media and U.S. literature was one that was firmly centered around a U.S. military perspective: in this collective cultural narrative, Vietnamese people were portrayed rather two-dimensionally as inscrutable yellow-skinned foreigners whose subjectivity either did not exist or could not be accessed. Vietnamese women, in particular, were depicted as either simple-minded rustics or unctuous whores. Englishman Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American admittedly predates this historical moment, but its introduction of a Vietnamese female character named Phuong -- alluring yet opaque, dim-witted yet unconsciously, tantalizingly sexual, a commodity to be fought over rather than identified with -- was echoed in western writers' portrayals of Vietnamese women for decades to follow. Contrast this erstwhile poverty of imagination with the current state of Vietnam-War-related literature: in both prose and poetry, there is now a wide range of diverse perspectives on the scene, including a whole host of powerful diasporic Vietnamese poetic voices -- voices like Linh Dinh's, Bao Phi's, Cathy Linh Che's, Ocean Vuong's, and Hieu Minh Nguyen's, to name just a few.
In the context of this atomically potent, new poetic paradigm, Matthews's quotation is all the more striking. It is striking because it reminds us that, in a way, we have Yusef Komunyakaa to thank for the richness and nuance that now defines the genre of Vietnam War poetry. Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau was the forerunner of it all. It is the beginning that we have to thank for today's robust middle.
This slim book follows a taut, carefully constructed arc. It begins with poems about military maneuvers, treks, patrols, long periods in which gruff men lived in the company of other gruff men, watching and waiting for the inevitable to happen. The book then moves on to evocations of the non-masculine lives the war touched, the Vietnamese monks and (especially) the Vietnamese women, how some were burned alive or raped, consigned to the role of a military man's two-timed mistress or his saviour symbol. Then we get snapshots of how the military men spent their precious moments of leisure time: playing volleyball, listening to music, seeking sexual release. Then there are poems about POWs (on both sides), the brutalities they faced. This section segues seamlessly into a suite of poems about the unique struggles confronted by African-Americans in the U.S. military, fighting for a country in which racial inequality and segregation were still a reality. In the bleak prose poem "The One-Legged Stool," the speaker, an African-American POW, tells his North Vietnamese captors: "I've been through Georgia. Yeah, been through 'Bama, too.... You eye me worse than those rednecks. They used to look at me in my uniform like I didn't belong in it.... All I have to go back to are faces like yours at the door." Receiving word of Martin Luther King's assassination back home is an additional cause of demoralization in the African-American soldiers Komunyakaa portrays. Finally, the book ends with an elegiac contemplation of the crippled lives the war left in its wake when it ended, forty years ago this week: the boat people, the ostracized mixed-race children, the broken marriages, the bereaved families, the vets grappling with survivors' guilt and PTSD.
There is a lamentable typo in the edition of this book that I bought: "dui boi" instead of "bui doi." Hopefully, this error was corrected in later editions. Overall, though, this is a book with an authoritative narrative voice, informed by intimate firsthand knowledge of Vietnam and of the Vietnam War (Komunyakaa even name-drops the 18th-to-19th-century Vietnamese poet Ho Xuan Huong in his poem "Saigon Bar Girls, 1975" -- a demonstration of deep cultural literacy that only the best writers in the field can match). The language is lyrical and imaginative, full of gloriously unexpected yet emotionally and visually precise metaphors: "Like an angel/pushed up against what hurts/his globe-shaped helmet/follows the gold ring his flashlight/casts into the void." This week, as the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon is commemorated, take a moment to sample the poems in this book. Read "Toys in a Field"; read "Boat People." Yes, there is much to mourn here, but there is also a birth, a new beginning, to celebrate.
On the back of this book, there is a blurb written by the late American poet William Matthews: "The best writing we've had from the long war in Vietnam has been prose so far. Yusef Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau changes that." Presumably, this quotation was elicited from Matthews around the time of Dien Cai Dau's first printing, in 1988. Since that time, it's safe to say the genre of Vietnam-War-related poetry has radically changed, growing broader, deeper, and more complex, to the point where Matthews's quote now seems a relic of a different geological age.
When I was growing up in the American Midwest in the '80s and '90s, it seemed that the predominant narrative about the Vietnam War in U.S. media and U.S. literature was one that was firmly centered around a U.S. military perspective: in this collective cultural narrative, Vietnamese people were portrayed rather two-dimensionally as inscrutable yellow-skinned foreigners whose subjectivity either did not exist or could not be accessed. Vietnamese women, in particular, were depicted as either simple-minded rustics or unctuous whores. Englishman Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American admittedly predates this historical moment, but its introduction of a Vietnamese female character named Phuong -- alluring yet opaque, dim-witted yet unconsciously, tantalizingly sexual, a commodity to be fought over rather than identified with -- was echoed in western writers' portrayals of Vietnamese women for decades to follow. Contrast this erstwhile poverty of imagination with the current state of Vietnam-War-related literature: in both prose and poetry, there is now a wide range of diverse perspectives on the scene, including a whole host of powerful diasporic Vietnamese poetic voices -- voices like Linh Dinh's, Bao Phi's, Cathy Linh Che's, Ocean Vuong's, and Hieu Minh Nguyen's, to name just a few.
In the context of this atomically potent, new poetic paradigm, Matthews's quotation is all the more striking. It is striking because it reminds us that, in a way, we have Yusef Komunyakaa to thank for the richness and nuance that now defines the genre of Vietnam War poetry. Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau was the forerunner of it all. It is the beginning that we have to thank for today's robust middle.
This slim book follows a taut, carefully constructed arc. It begins with poems about military maneuvers, treks, patrols, long periods in which gruff men lived in the company of other gruff men, watching and waiting for the inevitable to happen. The book then moves on to evocations of the non-masculine lives the war touched, the Vietnamese monks and (especially) the Vietnamese women, how some were burned alive or raped, consigned to the role of a military man's two-timed mistress or his saviour symbol. Then we get snapshots of how the military men spent their precious moments of leisure time: playing volleyball, listening to music, seeking sexual release. Then there are poems about POWs (on both sides), the brutalities they faced. This section segues seamlessly into a suite of poems about the unique struggles confronted by African-Americans in the U.S. military, fighting for a country in which racial inequality and segregation were still a reality. In the bleak prose poem "The One-Legged Stool," the speaker, an African-American POW, tells his North Vietnamese captors: "I've been through Georgia. Yeah, been through 'Bama, too.... You eye me worse than those rednecks. They used to look at me in my uniform like I didn't belong in it.... All I have to go back to are faces like yours at the door." Receiving word of Martin Luther King's assassination back home is an additional cause of demoralization in the African-American soldiers Komunyakaa portrays. Finally, the book ends with an elegiac contemplation of the crippled lives the war left in its wake when it ended, forty years ago this week: the boat people, the ostracized mixed-race children, the broken marriages, the bereaved families, the vets grappling with survivors' guilt and PTSD.
There is a lamentable typo in the edition of this book that I bought: "dui boi" instead of "bui doi." Hopefully, this error was corrected in later editions. Overall, though, this is a book with an authoritative narrative voice, informed by intimate firsthand knowledge of Vietnam and of the Vietnam War (Komunyakaa even name-drops the 18th-to-19th-century Vietnamese poet Ho Xuan Huong in his poem "Saigon Bar Girls, 1975" -- a demonstration of deep cultural literacy that only the best writers in the field can match). The language is lyrical and imaginative, full of gloriously unexpected yet emotionally and visually precise metaphors: "Like an angel/pushed up against what hurts/his globe-shaped helmet/follows the gold ring his flashlight/casts into the void." This week, as the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon is commemorated, take a moment to sample the poems in this book. Read "Toys in a Field"; read "Boat People." Yes, there is much to mourn here, but there is also a birth, a new beginning, to celebrate.
December 25, 2021
Intensa poesía sobre Vietnam.
September 2, 2024
We Never Know
He danced with tall grass
for a moment, like he was swaying
with a woman. Our gun barrels
glowed white-hot.
When I got to him,
a blue halo
of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbled photograph
from his fingers.
There's no other way
to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again,
except for a distant mortar
& somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be
kissing the ground.
He danced with tall grass
for a moment, like he was swaying
with a woman. Our gun barrels
glowed white-hot.
When I got to him,
a blue halo
of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbled photograph
from his fingers.
There's no other way
to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again,
except for a distant mortar
& somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be
kissing the ground.
July 15, 2010
Yusef Komunyakaa‘s Dien Cai Dau is another collection of Vietnam War poetry. The poet, who received the Bronze Star and edited The Southern Cross, dedicates this book to his brother Glenn, “who saw The Nam before” Komunyakaa did. His poems put the reader in the soldiers’ shoes, allowing them to camouflage themselves and skulk around the jungles of Vietnam from the very first lines of “Camouflaging the Chimera.” Beyond skulking in the jungle, hunting the Viet Cong, Komunyakaa discusses the weight of war as soldiers trudge through the landscape with their equipment and what they’ve done and seen. Weaving through the tunnels looking for the enemy or searching the thick forest, soldiers are constantly reminded of their emotional and physical burdens, though they find joy in some of the smallest moments.
One of the beautiful aspects of Komunyakaa’s poetry is his vivid sense of how even the most beautiful elements of nature have a darker side. In “Somewhere Near Phu Bai,” Komunyakaa writes “The moon cuts through/the night trees like a circular saw/white hot. . . .” and in “Starlight Scope Myopia,” he suggests, “Viet Cong/move under our eyelids,/lords over loneliness/winding like coral vine through/sandalwood & lotus/.”
Read the review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2010/07/d...
One of the beautiful aspects of Komunyakaa’s poetry is his vivid sense of how even the most beautiful elements of nature have a darker side. In “Somewhere Near Phu Bai,” Komunyakaa writes “The moon cuts through/the night trees like a circular saw/white hot. . . .” and in “Starlight Scope Myopia,” he suggests, “Viet Cong/move under our eyelids,/lords over loneliness/winding like coral vine through/sandalwood & lotus/.”
Read the review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2010/07/d...
October 15, 2019
Dien Cai Dau presents Yusef Komunyakaa’s time in Vietnam in what feels like the truest way— through poetry. Komunyakaa writes like a soldier commands— direct and abrupt, detailing action and reaction as it is and as should follow. At times, the straightforwardness of the images is jarring, showing how the day to day of war becomes numbing and repetitive, but each tragedy remains unforgettable and coils into the grooves of your mind. They can’t escape the war. They can only distract themselves momentarily from the thing that eats away at a country, their colleagues, and their psyche. Even when they return home, those vivid images flash in moments of captivity and death keeps ringing like a stain that cannot be wiped away.
While the subject matter is heavy, I believe this is an incredibly accessible collection since its language is more visceral and direct than abstract. It connects to the humanity and the struggle to maintain sanity within all of us. I would recommend this collection for readers who are interested in war experiences and poetry that snaps quickly in its pacing and images.
Top 5 Poems
-You and I Are Disappearing
-Tu Do Street
-The One-legged Stool
-Toys in a Field
-Missing in Action
While the subject matter is heavy, I believe this is an incredibly accessible collection since its language is more visceral and direct than abstract. It connects to the humanity and the struggle to maintain sanity within all of us. I would recommend this collection for readers who are interested in war experiences and poetry that snaps quickly in its pacing and images.
Top 5 Poems
-You and I Are Disappearing
-Tu Do Street
-The One-legged Stool
-Toys in a Field
-Missing in Action
March 9, 2022
Heavy. Sheds a light on the experience of American soldiers, and particularly Black American soldiers in Vietnam. It’s crazy to think that at the same time we were getting injured and killed protesting injustice back home, we were fighting (an unjust, f’d up war) for a nation that hates us in Vietnam. “VC didn’t kill Martin Luther King.” I can only imagine the psychological torment of hearing of King’s death while fighting in Vietnam. Komunyakaa puts warfare and it’s short and long-term effects in beautiful, haunting poetry.
February 18, 2017
I felt a lot of nostalgia reading this book of poetry. Much of the jargon used by Komunyakaa was the same jargon my father used when talking about Vietnam.
I can easily picture humping it through a rice paddy under the full moon. Feel that fear of men stalking me in the dark. Experience a little bit of the mental fragmentation that fighting men must have felt there.
I can easily picture humping it through a rice paddy under the full moon. Feel that fear of men stalking me in the dark. Experience a little bit of the mental fragmentation that fighting men must have felt there.
October 24, 2025
stunning in every sense of the word
September 30, 2025
So so good
October 24, 2025
Sve sta triba bit za ono sta je.
November 19, 2019
Poem picks:
Tu Do Street
One More Loss to Count
Re-creating the Scene
Facing It
Tu Do Street
One More Loss to Count
Re-creating the Scene
Facing It
November 25, 2020
I don’t know anything about poetry or war but this made me feel things
August 28, 2009
Dien Cai Dau - Awesome and Vivid Vietnam Poems
Professor Yusef Komunyakaa is just an awesome poet and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Pulitzer Prize Award for his book, Neon Vernacular. During the spring of 2009 I read four of his books for a class assignment and was just amazed by the brilliance I came across in his poems. He served as a military correspondence during the Vietnam conflict and was right in the thicket of the firefights where he wrote his stories.
Reading Dien Cai Dau brings the battlefields of the jungle right before the eyes. It's realistic, dynamic and vivid. Having served in the army with the Airborne Infantry, I am able to identify with the principles, concepts, and thoughts in this amazing and realistic book.
The first poem Camouflaging the Chimera is chilling. For example read these lines: "The river ran through our bones. Small animals took refuge against our bodies, we held our breath, ready to spring the L-shaped ambush." Such an ambush is one of the deadliest for any enemy force to find itself trapped into and cannot escape.
Moving on to another striking poem entitled, Tunnels, this one is more breath-taking. These are his words, "Crawling down head first into the hole, he kicked the air and disappeared." This is the tunnel rat who finds the enemy underground in swamp, musk, filth and grime.
"Fragging" is a situation in which a soldier should never find his or herself. This means death to the person being "fragged," and comes about when a senior ranking person is being mean-spirited to others in his own unit on the battlefield, thus creating hatred and conflict. Listen to these chilling words: "Slipping a finger into the metal ring, he's married to the devil-the spoon-shaped handle flies off. Everything breaks for green cover, like a hundred red birds released from a wooden box."
Watching a person burn is really a gruesome sight, especially when one is unable to do anything to save the person. These words bring to the forefront such a reality in the poem You and I Are Disappearing: "We stood there with our hands hanging at our sides while she burns like a sack of dry ice, she burns like oil on water, she burns like a shot glass of vodka, she burns like a burning bush driven by a godawful wind."
These fellows in the next poem are very deadly. They will creep out of anywhere in the middle of the night and launch an attack. Listen to these words from the poem Sappers: "They fall & rise again like torchbearers, with their naked bodies greased so moonlight dances off their skins." The imagery in this piece is vivid and poignant. One is able to see them clearly.
It's needless for me to write anymore about these poems. The picture is quite obvious that the poems in this book are just breath-taking and dramatic. One has to read this book to appreciate the drama.
More information on Professor Yusef Komunyakaa, 1994 Pulitzer Prize Winner, may be obtained at the following site:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komu...
Joseph S. Spence, Sr., is the author of "The Awakened One Poetics" published in seven languages. he also co-authored two poetry books, "A Trilogy of Poetry, Prose and Thoughts for the Mind, Body and Soul," Winner of the 2009 Best Christian Poetry Award) and "Trilogy Moments for the Mind, Body and Soul." He invented the Epulaeryu poetry form, which focuses on succulent cuisines and drinks. He is published in various forums, including the World Haiku Association; Milwaukee Area Technical College, Phoenix Magazine; and Taj Mahal Review. Joseph is a Goodwill Ambassador for the state of Arkansas, USA, and is an adjunct faculty at Milwaukee Area Technical College. He has completed over twenty years of service with the U.S. Army.
http://www.trilogypoetry.com/
Professor Yusef Komunyakaa is just an awesome poet and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Pulitzer Prize Award for his book, Neon Vernacular. During the spring of 2009 I read four of his books for a class assignment and was just amazed by the brilliance I came across in his poems. He served as a military correspondence during the Vietnam conflict and was right in the thicket of the firefights where he wrote his stories.
Reading Dien Cai Dau brings the battlefields of the jungle right before the eyes. It's realistic, dynamic and vivid. Having served in the army with the Airborne Infantry, I am able to identify with the principles, concepts, and thoughts in this amazing and realistic book.
The first poem Camouflaging the Chimera is chilling. For example read these lines: "The river ran through our bones. Small animals took refuge against our bodies, we held our breath, ready to spring the L-shaped ambush." Such an ambush is one of the deadliest for any enemy force to find itself trapped into and cannot escape.
Moving on to another striking poem entitled, Tunnels, this one is more breath-taking. These are his words, "Crawling down head first into the hole, he kicked the air and disappeared." This is the tunnel rat who finds the enemy underground in swamp, musk, filth and grime.
"Fragging" is a situation in which a soldier should never find his or herself. This means death to the person being "fragged," and comes about when a senior ranking person is being mean-spirited to others in his own unit on the battlefield, thus creating hatred and conflict. Listen to these chilling words: "Slipping a finger into the metal ring, he's married to the devil-the spoon-shaped handle flies off. Everything breaks for green cover, like a hundred red birds released from a wooden box."
Watching a person burn is really a gruesome sight, especially when one is unable to do anything to save the person. These words bring to the forefront such a reality in the poem You and I Are Disappearing: "We stood there with our hands hanging at our sides while she burns like a sack of dry ice, she burns like oil on water, she burns like a shot glass of vodka, she burns like a burning bush driven by a godawful wind."
These fellows in the next poem are very deadly. They will creep out of anywhere in the middle of the night and launch an attack. Listen to these words from the poem Sappers: "They fall & rise again like torchbearers, with their naked bodies greased so moonlight dances off their skins." The imagery in this piece is vivid and poignant. One is able to see them clearly.
It's needless for me to write anymore about these poems. The picture is quite obvious that the poems in this book are just breath-taking and dramatic. One has to read this book to appreciate the drama.
More information on Professor Yusef Komunyakaa, 1994 Pulitzer Prize Winner, may be obtained at the following site:
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/komu...
Joseph S. Spence, Sr., is the author of "The Awakened One Poetics" published in seven languages. he also co-authored two poetry books, "A Trilogy of Poetry, Prose and Thoughts for the Mind, Body and Soul," Winner of the 2009 Best Christian Poetry Award) and "Trilogy Moments for the Mind, Body and Soul." He invented the Epulaeryu poetry form, which focuses on succulent cuisines and drinks. He is published in various forums, including the World Haiku Association; Milwaukee Area Technical College, Phoenix Magazine; and Taj Mahal Review. Joseph is a Goodwill Ambassador for the state of Arkansas, USA, and is an adjunct faculty at Milwaukee Area Technical College. He has completed over twenty years of service with the U.S. Army.
http://www.trilogypoetry.com/
November 2, 2013
Still the best book of poetry to come out of the Vietnam War. Komunyakaa takes the experiences of his personae at an angle, crafting images to reflect the various confrontations, deflections, evasions, blues memories that cycle in and out of focus. The collection's structured to move the reader from the middle of the jungle to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the stunning final poem, "Facing It." Each of the voices is so convincing it's tempting to read the collection as autobiographical, but that's true only in the loosest imaginable way. Komunyakaa had written powerful poetry and he's still writing it, but for me Dien Cai Dau remains the high point of a career that's earned him a place in the top rank of American poets, including Whitman, Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost [insert your favorites here].
May 6, 2025
This collection of poetry focuses on images of the war in Vietnam but also delicately deals with issues of race, gender, and trauma. This was the final reading for my Poetry of War class and the only full collection of poetry by one author that we discussed. I thought that I would enjoy this a lot more, as this collection has received lots of praise. However, this ending up disappointing me more than it interested me.
Perhaps, this is because I had to read it so fast, in only about a weekend, when normally I would take months savoring a poetry collection, reading a few poems a night. I think this probably did affect my reading of the pieces a bit.
Now, don’t get me wrong this wasn’t bad. There are some absolutely amazing poems in here like Facing It and Toys in a Field, but when the pieces aren’t amazing, they are just okay. A majority of the pieces in this collection did not stand out to me. I think that the pieces build on top of each other and so I would say the later half of the collection is much better than the first half.
There is also a weird thing going on this book about women and the role of women in war that I’m not completely sure I understood. I think I’d have to go back through and think more on how they are presented. At times it felt a bit icky, like there are so many poems with women who are really seen as like motivators for soldiers which I think is a common idea, but it got annoying with how often it is brought up in this collection.
I think the best parts of this collection are the way the poems cascade into a timeline of entering war, being stuck in war, leaving war, and memorializing war. I think Komunyakaa works best when he is contemplating his role as not just a soldier but a black soldier. The conversations about race were handled extremely well in this book, and were built in with so much obvert subtilty
I think this was an interesting read, but did get boring at points. Overall, I’m glad I read it (I mean I kind of had to, lol) but I don’t think I’ll be picking it up again any time soon.
Perhaps, this is because I had to read it so fast, in only about a weekend, when normally I would take months savoring a poetry collection, reading a few poems a night. I think this probably did affect my reading of the pieces a bit.
Now, don’t get me wrong this wasn’t bad. There are some absolutely amazing poems in here like Facing It and Toys in a Field, but when the pieces aren’t amazing, they are just okay. A majority of the pieces in this collection did not stand out to me. I think that the pieces build on top of each other and so I would say the later half of the collection is much better than the first half.
There is also a weird thing going on this book about women and the role of women in war that I’m not completely sure I understood. I think I’d have to go back through and think more on how they are presented. At times it felt a bit icky, like there are so many poems with women who are really seen as like motivators for soldiers which I think is a common idea, but it got annoying with how often it is brought up in this collection.
I think the best parts of this collection are the way the poems cascade into a timeline of entering war, being stuck in war, leaving war, and memorializing war. I think Komunyakaa works best when he is contemplating his role as not just a soldier but a black soldier. The conversations about race were handled extremely well in this book, and were built in with so much obvert subtilty
I think this was an interesting read, but did get boring at points. Overall, I’m glad I read it (I mean I kind of had to, lol) but I don’t think I’ll be picking it up again any time soon.
December 29, 2017
I had to look up Dien Cai Dau, in GI parlance it is Dinky Dau, or Crazy. Any book that sends me to the dictionary so I can understand the title is a great book!
Yusef Komunyakaa served in the 'Nam and these poems tell of his experiences. They are lyrical, easily read and understood by anyone, and paint vivid pictures not just of the boy-men as they went through the jungles, but also the boy-men as they found entertainment and pleasure when, where they could.
Someone owned this book before me, and I think used it in class, as there are notes, and in a couple of places notes on the notes. While there are those who would find this distracting, I found it sauce for the feast.
My tears supplied the salt.
If Viet Nam was your war, then this is a book for you to read. If you are too young to remember and or partaken of that war, then this is a good book for you to read and learn something about it from someone who had his boots on the ground.
Yusef Komunyakaa served in the 'Nam and these poems tell of his experiences. They are lyrical, easily read and understood by anyone, and paint vivid pictures not just of the boy-men as they went through the jungles, but also the boy-men as they found entertainment and pleasure when, where they could.
Someone owned this book before me, and I think used it in class, as there are notes, and in a couple of places notes on the notes. While there are those who would find this distracting, I found it sauce for the feast.
My tears supplied the salt.
If Viet Nam was your war, then this is a book for you to read. If you are too young to remember and or partaken of that war, then this is a good book for you to read and learn something about it from someone who had his boots on the ground.
January 19, 2024
Favorites: "Jungle Surrender" / "The One-legged Stool" / "To Have Danced with Death" / "Report from the Skull's Diorama" / "Bui Doi, Dust of Life" / "Missing in Action" / "Between Days" / "Facing It"
Many of the poems about soldier's seeing prostitutes--and really just the mentions to Vietnamese women in general--veer closer to reproducing fetishism rather than reflection, but otherwise (not to minimize that point, which I can see room for disagreement on), this is a strong collection. I did expect more explicit, sustained commentary on the specific experiences Black soldiers faced in relation to Vietnam. We get that in some individual poems (like "The One-legged Stool" or "Report from the Skull's Diorama"), but the volume's real focus is closer to the psychology of war as reflected through Vietnam's geography and the estrangement of memory when one has spent much significant time in a foreign country. This is my first real dive into Komunyakaa's work, and I will be continuing.
Many of the poems about soldier's seeing prostitutes--and really just the mentions to Vietnamese women in general--veer closer to reproducing fetishism rather than reflection, but otherwise (not to minimize that point, which I can see room for disagreement on), this is a strong collection. I did expect more explicit, sustained commentary on the specific experiences Black soldiers faced in relation to Vietnam. We get that in some individual poems (like "The One-legged Stool" or "Report from the Skull's Diorama"), but the volume's real focus is closer to the psychology of war as reflected through Vietnam's geography and the estrangement of memory when one has spent much significant time in a foreign country. This is my first real dive into Komunyakaa's work, and I will be continuing.
March 8, 2018
Dien Cai Dau means "crazy" in Vietnamese. It's also the title of a collection of poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa. It's not often you read poetry by somebody who has both the Pulitzer Prize for his writing and the Bronze Star for his time in Vietnam. It made me feel like I was in a pleasant dream that slowly morphed into a bad one. Brief and powerful work. This volume was published in 1988. I was 21 and not even commissioned yet.
Lately, I'm obsessed with luck. In "Thanks," Komunyakaa is grateful for avoiding a sniper's bullet. Thankful that fate has let him pass. Thankful for other near misses. This part grabbed me:
Again, thanks for the dud
hand grenade tossed at my feet
outside Chu Lai. I'm still
falling through its silence.
Read more of this review at https://ericchandler.wordpress.com/20...
October 2, 2025
3.75
Really good collection, not something I would have picked up if it wasn't for my class, but happy I did as there were some specific pieces that really stood out to me
I am not a "collection" reader as I feel like the poems are not too definitive for me to quite remember them (which makes sense for the themeology of a poetry collection), which is why I tend to prefer collected editions of a poets work over a defined collection, but this collection worked very well together and each poem only heighted the next.
It terms of Vietnam, this collection really captures the uncertainty and horror of the atrocities of this war, and was an amazing supplemental reading while I learn about Vietnam and its history
Really good collection, not something I would have picked up if it wasn't for my class, but happy I did as there were some specific pieces that really stood out to me
I am not a "collection" reader as I feel like the poems are not too definitive for me to quite remember them (which makes sense for the themeology of a poetry collection), which is why I tend to prefer collected editions of a poets work over a defined collection, but this collection worked very well together and each poem only heighted the next.
It terms of Vietnam, this collection really captures the uncertainty and horror of the atrocities of this war, and was an amazing supplemental reading while I learn about Vietnam and its history
December 28, 2019
Poetry is not something that I'm able to connect with easily. Sometimes I read the words and can't understand how they even fit together to make an image, so what I greatly benefited from with this collection, is that I knew going into it that all the poems were connected by the thread of a black American soldier who fought in the Vietnam War. There are some poems in there that I had to look up a bit of historical context for, and when I did it only intensified the realism in the poem - descriptions of war horrors that are best left to words because pictures could not do them justice. This is, in the opinion of my generally poetically illiterate self, an artistically amazing piece of work.
November 5, 2023
A collection of poems focusing on the Vietnam War.
from Tunnels: "Through silver / live, shit, maggots, & vapor of pestilence, / he goes, the good soldier, / on hands & knees, tunneling past / death sacked into a blind corner, / loving the weight of the shotgun / that will someday dig his grave."
from "You and I Are Disappearing": "The cry I bring down from the hills / belongs to a girl still burning / inside my head. At daybreak / she burns like a piece of paper."
from One More Loss to Count: "Like the cassette rewinding / we roll back the words in our throats. / She closes her eyes, the photograph / falls from her hand / like the ace of spades / shadowing a pale leaf."
from Tunnels: "Through silver / live, shit, maggots, & vapor of pestilence, / he goes, the good soldier, / on hands & knees, tunneling past / death sacked into a blind corner, / loving the weight of the shotgun / that will someday dig his grave."
from "You and I Are Disappearing": "The cry I bring down from the hills / belongs to a girl still burning / inside my head. At daybreak / she burns like a piece of paper."
from One More Loss to Count: "Like the cassette rewinding / we roll back the words in our throats. / She closes her eyes, the photograph / falls from her hand / like the ace of spades / shadowing a pale leaf."
July 20, 2022
Read this book, & you'll experience PTSD flashbacks from America's past war in Vietnam, though if you hadn't been there, here you'll find a mix of both deliverance and napalm. All in all, this was a 'searing' reading experience, from start to finish. One of the very few books of published commercial poetry which ought to be savored repeatedly, again and again.
January 4, 2025
Bob Hope's on stage, but we want the Gold Diggers,
want a flash of legs
through the hemorrhage of vermilion, giving us
something to kill for.
We want our hearts wrung out like rags & ground down to Georgia dust
while Cobras drag the perimeter, gliding along the sea,
swinging searchlights
through the trees.
October 2, 2024
I actually really enjoyed this. I haven't read much about the Vietnam War but this was some good insight from the perspective of a black GI. The racial divide as well as the enemy at hand made it difficult to see which side he was fighting for. (IMO)
March 3, 2025
I really don't feel that connected to poetry and I kinda didn't get how the words and sentences are connected in this collection and I also felt really puzzled but nonetheless I still felt the trauma, agony, pointlessness of war.
March 31, 2018
The best book of poetry I have read in a long, long time.
March 16, 2019
This is the first poetry collection I have ever read, and I love every single line of it. Yusef Komunyakaa's poems are captivating, and you will stare in awe at the brilliant imagery.
November 6, 2019
this beautiful, this terrible, this wound. Komunyakaa renders that hazy and hectic war with such clarity.
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