SOURCE: "The Poetry of Truth," in The Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, May-June, 1990, p. 27.

Maio is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt from a comparative review of Dien cai dau and Lowell Jaeger's War on War (1988), he discusses Komunyakaa's examination of the psychological effects of the Vietnam War in Dien cai dau.

Of the many recent books of poetry concerned with the Vietnam War, Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa and War on War by Lowell Jaeger share the most in common, each resembling the other in thematic focus: the mental anguish of this war, for combatants, observers, participants, and objectors, which Komunyakaa calls "the psychological terrain that makes us all victims." This peculiar aspect of Vietnam continues to rage "behind the eyes" (Komunyakaa's phrase) of all those affected by the war, those who fought in it, as did Komunyakaa, and those who refused, choosing instead...