Analysis Of Thanks By Yusef Komunyakaa

The two poems that I have selected for the Analytic Paper are “Blue Light Lounge Sutra For The Performance Poets At Harold Park Hotel” and “Thanks” by Yusef Komunyakaa. The former was read and analyzed as part of a class discussion early on in the quarter while the latter is a piece never analyzed, but closely related to another that was examined for its content and stylistic techniques (“Facing It”, Penguin Anthology, page 441). Though both were written by the same author, there are specific discrepancies in rhythm and wording that create artistic differences that suit the subject of each piece.
Both poems use repetition of phrases and anaphora to establish a pace for the speaker’s voice. The repeating syllables provide a pseudo-break in

between the lines of the poem, which were written into a single stanza instead of being broken up into smaller pieces. Through this method of linear procession, the transition of ideas and subject matter is abrupt, suiting the tone of the speaker’s active voice. In “Thanks”, the direct repetition of a specific phrase helps the reader hone in on specific events that contribute to the overall theme of the poem, namely the speaker’s focus on objects and events that keep him out of danger. However, the reiteration of “Thanks for the”, found in lines 1, 9, 17 and 21, serve as preludes to lengthy observations of the speaker’s hostile environment, building up a subtle tempo that is meant to create a paradoxical charge of familiarity and unfamiliarity through the use of analogies.

Similarly, Komunyakaa denotes transition in his “Blue Light Lounge

Sutra” piece with the phrase, “the need gotta be”. Like “Thanks”, false breaks in the poem are created through the repetition of a common phrase, highlighting the fast-paced syllabic continuity of the speaker’s thoughts. Rhythmic pacing is also set through the repeated use of elision, omitting syllables in words like “going to” and “until” to imitate a technique commonly associated with jazz music. The syncopation of short syllables or ‘weak beats’ in the poem incorporate a subtle musicality that is easily linked back to the poem’s title and content as an ornamental element in the poem’s structure.
The seamless transition between the abstract and concrete ideas in both poems help pull the reader in and out of the speaker’s environment. Through vividly crafted analogies, comparisons of increasingly passionate emotions and actions are drawn to the poem’s primary theme in order to transition the flow of content to a climax. Each line builds up from the previous, using the power of association to create emotive charge. “Blue Light Lounge Sutra” describes “the need” for performance through eccentric descriptions, association to vice-like activities and addictions, to indicate the level of intensity felt by the speaker. Unlike “Thanks”, which relies mostly on the equal balance of abstraction and concretion of details, “Blue Light Lounge Sutra” uses charged descriptors to characterize “the need”, stating, “so deep that you can vomit up ghosts/& not feel broken” (lines 12-13) and “so that all the sex and dope in the world/can’t erase your need/to howl against the sky”(lines 19-21). It is through association made by the speaker that carries the ‘plot’ and ‘flow’ of the piece, allowing the reader to come to a conclusion about “the need” that is carefully crafted by the underlying moody and sinister voice of the speaker. But the artistic use of association is more like the juxtaposition of concrete description with conceptual triggers in “Thanks”. Komunyakaa switches the setting between the battle against the Viet Cong to idealistic details of his civilian life, pulling the reader back and forth between the environment and his memories to recreate the perspective he experienced first hand. The descriptors he used are more toned down, threading minute observational details like the“mist of the grass” (line 21) to an abstract metaphor of the war. This exaggeration of the speaker’s point of view greatly elevates the tone of the speaker’s voice, providing characterization not just for his emotions, but setting of the poem and its background environment as well.
While Komunyakaa skillfully combines the conceptual and tangible aspects of the content to influence a multi-faceted interpretation of his pieces, the prominent use of association differs greatly in the content. In “Blue Light Lounge Sutra”, descriptors such as “[coloring] the air indigo” (line 6) and “salt [crystallizing] on eyelashes” (line 10) are not meant to elevate the presence of the speaker or the setting. They are purposely abstract imagery details used to contribute to a single idea, which is “the need”, an equally abstract concept that is intangible but given form through physical descriptions and actions.
Whereas “Blue Light Lounge Sutra” plays on the reader’s ability to connect to and project on the abstractions in the content, “Thanks” relies solely on the speaker’s narrative and perspectives. There is no draw to pull in the reader through intricately crafted analogies, but the comparisons made in the content is meant to provoke an emotional reaction of the reader by relaying the speaker’s turbulent reality. Chronological details such as “ . . . the dud/hand grenade tossed at my feet outside Chu Lai” (lines 31-33) are followed by careful jumps to the past, which is distorted by the overstatement of his observations in lines such as “ . . . I’m still/falling through its silence./I don’t know why the intrepid/sun touched the bayonet,” (lines 33-36). This push and pull in time is a common technique used throughout the poem to establish the speaker’s state of being through his point of view.
But despite the similar structure of stanzas and general use of primary linguistic techniques to portray the theme of each individual piece, it is ultimately the speaker’s voice and use of tone that creates distinction in the poem’s content. Both poems start off with its initial catch phrase, “Thanks for the”(line 1) and “the need gotta be” (line 1), but the differences in formality indicate the tone of the speaker’s voice, allowing the reader to have a general feel of the poem’s content. In “Blue Light Lounge Sutra”, the diction is informal, evident in the use of slang and absence of punctuation and capitalization of content. The casual individualistic prompting of the reader through the pronoun “you” is linked to suggestive action, denoted by the “gotta”, eliciting a persuasive quality in the speaker’s voice that is artistically elevated by the abstractions associated with a state of being in “the need”. “You gotta get hooked/into every hungry groove/so deep the bomb locked/in rust . . .” (lines 28-31) is a good example of the concrete request that gives way to the pathos and abstraction of poem’s main theme. Though it is the conceptual details that create the intense charge of the poem, the speaker’s ability to maintain the tone of the poem is what allows the emotive rush to build in the first place.
However, in “Thanks”, the poem’s diction is more formal despite it being about a record of the first-hand experiences the author recalls about the Vietnam War. There is use of punctuation, which provides the speaker with a neutral voice that is almost conversational in tone. The deliberate pacing of the speaker’s chronological recollection of his experiences is what pulls in the reader and allows for the content of the piece to be skillfully fleshed out by the speaker’s observations. And while there are no stanza breaks in the poem’s structure, the deliberate repetition of certain lines as well as the separation of sentences into a sequence of lines implies a certain formality in the speaker’s tone that is matched by the content of the piece. There is no place of indication where the reader can project their own thoughts and interpretations into the content as exemplified in lines 11-16, “I was back in San Francisco/wrapped up in a woman’s wild colors/causing some dark bird’s love call/to be shattered by daylight/when my hands reached up/& and pulled a branch away”. The purpose of the conceptual descriptors following the address of a first-person point of view is to assist with the push and pull of the reader’s experience from the past to the present, with the descriptors being indicators of a past memory. Although the tone and content of “Thanks” is impartial, the progression of the past to the present is what fuels the momentum of the poem.
The overall emotive charge of each piece is dependent on how well the contrasting aspects of the content and its stylistic choices combine together.

Even when the structure of both poems are the same (no stanza breaks), the differences in the speaker’s voice and diction play an enormous part in building the poem’s plot and setting. And though Komunyakaa employs the same techniques in both poems, the end result is so different from the other through meticulous attention to the connotative quality of specific words and phrases that “Blue Light Lounge Sutra” perfectly depicts the thrall of performance through the seductive references of the properties of jazz and lounge music. On other the hand, “Thanks” is a subtle but powerful depiction of the violence seen in the Vietnam War due to its address of personal experience juxtaposed with an extreme outside environment that most readers have never encountered. Each break in a sentence artistically elevates the colloquial voice of speaker and produces an underlying poetic element that emphasizes its content, namely the distinction between the use of the abstract and the concrete. Both pieces are dependent on the reader’s ability to perceive the central theme of the content, but through attentive and purposeful use of linguistic and stylistic techniques, the differences apparent in each poem create an individual voice to that truly brings out the author’s

perspective.