Saddik Gohar / IJSSAH/10(1) 2023; 1-16 International Journal of Social Sciences Arts & Humanities 1 Full Length Research Paper Full Length Research Article The Fall of the American Myth of Collective Consciousness in the War Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Yusef Komunyakaa Prof. Saddik Gohar The Translation expert of the National Library and Archives, UAE Ministry of Presidential Affairs, UAE ARTICLE INFORMATION ABSTRACT Introduction In No Bugles No Drums, a Vietnam war novel, Jinx, a black soldier, who is frequently humiliated by white soldiers during the war, denounces the racial politics of the American army in Vietnam as an evidence of American racism during war. Realizing the inherent racism of the military and suffering from intense guilt feelings as a result of being tricked in such a vicious war, Jinx tells his friend Hawkins: They [white people] finally figured a way to kill spades [blacks] and slopes [Vietnamese people] at the same time .. If we was smart we‟d get together . Niggers of the world unite (123) . At the climax of the novel, Jinx escapes from the American army and joins the enemy, the Viet Cong forces. He prefers to become a soldier in the enemy army because “Ain‟t no VC (Viet Cong) ever called me a nigger” (184). Vol. 10. No.1. 2023. ©Copyright by CRDEEP Journals. All Rights Reserved. Contents available at: www.crdeepjournal.org International Journal of Social Sciences Arts & Humanities (ISSN: 2321-4147)(CIF: 3.625) Corresponding Author: Prof. Saddik Gohar Article history: Received: 02-02-2023 Revised: 10-02-2023 Accepted: 25-02-2023 Published: 27-02-2023 Key words: Fall, America, Consciousness This paper critically examines the war poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Yusef Komunyakaa in order to explore the complex relationship between war and racism in twentieth century black poetry. The paper emphasizes the existence of a strong link between war and racism in the poetry of Brooks and Komunyakaa which undermines the American myth of collective consciousness during war which assumes that in wartime American army becomes the location for the eradication of ethnic and racial barriers among white and black soldiers. By creating an analogy between white racism in the battlefield (abroad) and its counterpart in the American society (at home), the two poets seek to redefine the concepts of “war” and “the enemy” reaching significant conclusions in this respect. For example, in Brooks’ Second world War poems, black soldiers realized that they were involved in two simultaneous wars – one against Hitler in Germany and one against the Hitlers of the United States. Equally, in Komunyakaa’s Vietnam War poetry, black soldiers in the American army identified themselves with the Viet Cong (the enemy) because the Viet Cong forces, like the Black power movement in the 1960s and 1970s, were engaged in revolutionary struggle against the same oppressive /racist system which attempted to annihilate both of them.Within this context, Brooks and Komunyakaa redefine “the enemy” not as Germans holding machine guns or Viet Cong carrying hand-grenades but as fellow Americans with white skin. Both poets equally reconstruct “war” as a complex tissue of meaning where the battlefield exists simultaneously on foreign grounds (abroad) as well as at the black ghetto (at home). In their poetry as recorded in Brooks’ A Street in Bronzeville (1945) and Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau / They Are Crazy In The Head (1988), war becomes the trope for the equally injurious institutionalized racism in the American society itself. By drawing such an analogy between war and racism , the two poets attempt to narrow the gap between military and racial , between soldier and civilian in order to undermine the American myth of collective consciousness during war and emphasize the fact that American racism against blacks in wartime is an extension of the same racism which characterized life in America for centuries. In addition to the subtle treatment of the peculiar link between war and racism in the Afro-American poetry of Brooks and Komunyakaa, the paper equally aims to locate the war poetry of these two poets in its appropriate place within the tradition of twentieth century war poetry by exploring the racial and ethnic elements of their poetry and by illuminating many other aspects (in terms of content and poetic techniques) which distinguish their poetry from the war poetry written by any other poets.