SOURCE: "Rare Instances of Reconciliation," in Epoch, Vol. 38, No. 1, 1989, pp. 67-72.

Aubert is an American educator, critic, and writer who specializes in African-American studies. In the following review, he discusses the major themes in Dien cai dau, including war, nature, and home.

Yusef Komunyakaa, a Black American poet and Vietnam vet, achieves striking surrealistic effects in his poetic renditions of the horrors of Vietnam. He is careful, however, not to overdo it. We find him equally cautious in dealing with his ethnicity, apparently apprehensive of some of the aesthetic risks involved on both counts. In incorporating his African-Americaness into his poems he maintains a balanced general European- and African-American perspective of Vietnam combat experiences while keeping his readers sufficiently aware of the extent to which the Black American soldier still has to contend with the differential burden of racial, oftime racist, inequities.

Thus, ironically, Komunyakaa's Vietnam experiences and...