Grease, Peace, and Memory's Release

Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station," James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock...," and Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It" gave me vivid descriptions of the place which each wanted me to experience. Each poem is filled to the brim with imagery. "Filling Station" uses words such as "oil-soaked," "oil-permeated," "greasy," "saucy," and "dirty" to appropriately give the idea of a family filling station for cars. "Lying in a Hammock..." does an even better job of describing place than "Filling Station" through the use of imagery and simile to place the reader in a calm setting at William Duffy's farm in Pine Island, Minnesota. "To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines" definitely gives the reader a specific vision of trees and the familiar view of sunlight on grass. The line "...I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow." uses simile to give the reader the calming feel of lying in a hammock, watching a butterfly gracefully pass by. However, out of the three poems, "Facing It" made me feel the most like I was in the place being described - in this case, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It employs imagery and metaphor (stronger than simile) to allow the reader to get a grasp on not only the place, but the author's feelings about the place. "My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite....No tears. I'm stone." Within the first five lines, not only does one get a sense of the place (which is explicitly named six lines down), but one also receives the valuable information of how the author feels simply being in this sacred place. The best line in "Facing It" is "Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall." simply for how Komunyakaa describes the not-forgotten feel of the names imprinted on the wall of the memorial.