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Yusef Komunyakaa: Questioning Traditional Metaphors of Light and Darkness

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Yusef Komunyakaa: Questioning Traditional Metaphors of Light and Darkness University of Northern Iowa UNI ScholarWorks Dissertations and Theses @ UNI Student Work 1999 Yusef Komunyakaa: Questioning traditional metaphors of light and darkness Katarzyna Jakubiak University of Northern Iowa Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy Copyright ©1999 Katarzyna Jakubiak Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Jakubiak, Katarzyna, "Yusef Komunyakaa: Questioning traditional metaphors of light and darkness" (1999). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 651. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/651 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at UNI ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses @ UNI by an authorized administrator of UNI ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Copyright by KATARZYNA JAKUBIAK 1999 All Rights Reserved YUSEF KOMUNY AKAA: QUESTIONING TRADITIONAL METAPHORS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS An Abstract of a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Katarzyna Jakubiak University of Northern Iowa July 1999 ABSTRACT The theory of language promoted by cognitive linguistics points to metaphor as the crucial element of language and thought: a mode of thinking which determines our perception of reality. Stressing the importance of metaphor in our everyday life, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner state that the nature of poetic metaphors is the same as the nature of conventional metaphors which appear in "standard" language. Creating poetic metaphors, poets simply explore "conventional" metaphors, using four major strategies: expanding, elaborating, composing, and questioning. Focusing on questioning as the main strategy through which American "multicultural" literatures can undermine basic Western concepts of the English language, this study examines the ways in which Yusef Komunyakaa questions conventional metaphors of light and darkness in his poetry. Chapter One of this thesis situates the cognitive linguistics' theory of metaphor in the context of African American literary criticism, especially the theory of double-voice. Chapter Two investigates Komunyakaa's treatment of conventional metaphors of outer and inner sight, directly related to the concepts of light and darkness, in Neon Vernacular, and emphasizes the importance of the imagery of seeing in Komunyakaa's definition of power relations in the contemporary world. Chapter Three focuses directly on metaphors of light and darkness in Neon Vernacular: Komunyakaa's attempts to reverse the traditional definitions through criticism of light, as well as his use of the imagery of union between light and darkness as a metaphor of the African-American double-consciousness. Chapter Four analyzes Komunyakaa's use of metaphors of light and darkness in Dien Cai Dau to describe an extreme situation of the Vietnam war, and define the identity of the American nation in liminal circumstances. The final part of this thesis concludes that Komunyakaa's central imagery of light and darkness in union might be treated as a metaphor of the underlining feature of Komunyakaa's work: merging of Western and African traditions. YUSEF KOMUNY AKAA: QUESTIONING TRADITIONAL METAPHORS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Katarzyna Jakubiak University of Northern Iowa July 1999 11 This Study by: Katarzyna Jakubiak Entitled: Yusef Komunyakaa: Questioning Traditional Metaphors of Light and Darkness has been approved as meeting the thesis requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts ;).S~71 Dateu~,, Dr. Vince Gotera, Chair, Thesis Committee Date Dr. Pierre-Damien Mvyuekure, Thesis Committee Member ill ACKNOWLEOOEMENTS This thesis could not have been written without the inspiration and guidance of Dr. Vince Gotera, who first encouraged me to study the poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa. I am grateful to Dr. Pierre-Damien Mvuyekure and Dr. Cheryl Roberts for their invaluable advice and criticism of various parts of this manuscript. I also wish to thank Dr. John Somervill and Dr. Jeff Copeland for help in obtaining funds which enabled me to complete this study. A special thanks to Dr. Noel H. Kaylor, who made my studies at UN1 possible and offered his friendship, advice, and support throughout my whole stay here. Last, but not least, I am grateful to my husband Paul Kotrodimos for his insightful comments on Komunyakaa's poetry and for his love, sacrifice, and support which gave me energy and motivation to work. lV TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER 1. CRITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDY OF KOMUNY AKAA'S POETRY: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISM AND COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ......................................... 1 Double-Voice in African American Literary Criticism ................................. 3 Cognitive Linguistics and Study of Poetry .............................................. 9 CHAPTER 2. "LOOK, BACK OF THE EYES:" SIGHT AND INSIGHT IN NEON VERNACULAR ...................................................... 20 Fatal Perception: The Function of Sight in Komunyakaa's Vernacular ............ 22 "Wings Over Bruised Eyes:" The Saving and Liberating Function of Insight .... 41 CHAPTER 3. RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE OF LANGUAGE: METAPHORS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS IN NEON VERNACULAR ............. 56 "Atrocities of Brightness:" Criticizing Light .......................................... 58 "First Thing Tied to Last:" Identity as Double-Consciousness of Light and Darkness............................................................. 76 CHAPTER 4. READING THE "NEON VERNACULAR" OF DIEN CAI DAU ........ 97 "White Fists" and "Intrepid Sun:" Ambiguity of Light ............................. 105 "Worlds Under Eyelids:" Seeing During and After the War ....................... 118 CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 140 REFERENCES ................................................................................... 151 1 CHAPTER 1 CRITICAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDY OF KOMUNYAKAA'S POETRY: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISM AND COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS In spite of general acclaim, the most conspicuous manifestation of which is, obviously, the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the work of Yusef Komunyakaa has not yet received the critical examination it deserves. The most extensive discussions of Komunyakaa's poems, which deal with both content and form ofKomunyakaa's poetry, concentrate mainly on the Vietnam war poems which form Dien Cai Dau, and merely signal Komunyakaa' s other collections as an important but briefly characterized frame of reference (Gotera, Ringnalda, Stein). Numerous reviews of Komunyakaa's books rarely go further than summaries of particular poems and expressions of the reviewer's stupefaction at the esoteric quality of Komunyakaa's language. One positive exception is Michael Collins' review of Neon Vernacular and Magic City for Parnassus, which devotes a lot of space to an insightful analysis of formal aspects of Komunyakaa's poems. Generally, however, the reviewers direct their attention more to what they think is said in the poems than how it is said. The "how" of Komunyakaa's poetry has so far been the center of discussion of two critics: Kirkland C. Jones and Sascha Feinstein. Comparing Komunyakaa and Dove, Jones attempts to show "the folk idiom" of Komunyakaa's poetry: how "these poems examine folk concepts, folk beliefs, folk sayings, songs and the terminology of two traditionally African American musical genres, the blues and jazz" (158). Jones's analysis, however, is mostly limited to indication of certain "folk" expressions in particular poems without extensive explanation of their function. Feinstein, on the other hand, in his book Jazz. Poetry presents an ingenious discussion of Komunyakaa's "dissonances and 2 resolutions" (169) and "strong visual images ... [which] approximate sound," which, however, limited to three pages, only whets our appetite for more. The centrality of the very matter of language to Komunyakaa's poetic creation has been emphasized in Komunyakaa's own remarks about his poetry in numerous interviews, which so far constitute the most revealing "criticism" published about the poet. In a fascinating conversation with William Matthews and Robert Kelly published in The Georgia Review, Komunyakaa stresses the importance of "jazz language"--"repetitions," "refrains," and "the whole improvisational spirit of jazz" --to his own particular poems and the African American literature and culture as a whole (656, 657, 645). In an interview for Callaloo, in response to Gotera's remarks about Samuel Delany's view on individual words in literature as "colors" which affect the whole picture, Komunyakaa provides an answer which emphasizes the significance of language not only in poetry, but in human life in general: Definitely. Language is color. All the tinges and strokes equal the whole picture; it is what converges within the frame of reference. The same as music and silence. And one doesn't need psychotropic drugs to see and feel the intensity of expression. After all, language is what can liberate or imprison the human psyche. (225) Moreover, in an interview for New England Review, talking about traditional Western connotations of light and darkness, Komunyakaa tells Muna Asali about the necessity of awareness of our use of language and of his own efforts to make English language represent
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