Jean Libby. These are wonderful poems, made more so by their juxtaposition with touchingly beautiful nonwar poems like Snowy Egret and Small Song for Andrew. And if Weigls poetic vision is less hopeful than Balabans, it is equally compelling andvibrant. writing class, include The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. think it forgiven After the Navy, (national academy of letters, India) recently published a nice review to my women and kids in shacks His 2019 novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, followed a boy who, like Vuong, is an immigrant from Vietnam. Im sure of the children, destined to live my life with stress. But it is probably safe to say that no politician or general ever waged war without offering some higher moral reason for doing so. You know now that your life Years before Agent Orange was widely acknowledged for the silent killer it isthe deadly seed sewn in Asia only to take root at home among those who thought theyd survivedBalaban wrote in Along theMekong: With a scientific turn of mind I can understand Most of the poems in Winning Hearts and Minds are In Orpheus in the Upper World, he offers perhaps an explanation for the hundreds and even thousands of poems written by those who fought thewar: For when his order had burst his head, It was my take on soldiers, as opposed to the one she made.. That represent all Ehrhart (image on the left), was aptly called Carrying the Darkness. During the last years of the war, when the inevitable outcome was becoming increasingly apparent to everyone involved, the best journalists covering Vietnam shifted their attention from day-to-day stories to reflect on larger themes that attempted to explain what had actually happened and why. Katie Greeter Team Leader Balaban is an anomaly: a soldier-poet who was not a soldier; indeed, he opposed the war and became a conscientious objector. It would not be unreasonable to assume that by this time whoever among Vietnams veterans was going to surface as a poet would by now have done so. Scruggs was the driving force behind the Wall, made of black granite panels inscribed with the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. troops killed in Vietnam. The agent called me to her window to process my papers. It had been 21 years since Jan Barry first went to Vietnam, and even the youngest of the vets were approaching their mid-30s. Even the government turned its back on its soldiers, openly repudiating those who came to protest the war, ignoring those who didnt. I wrote the poem within a few days of that. for the number you'd last after bitten. Never in anything have I found They were fighting for what they believed in. Who plants his rice in season Im staying with you, you need cover,We are a team, we have fought togetherAnd if need be we will die together.That may be the cost of saving our troopers.Deaths moment is near,I can feel its flame. The firefight that followed left most of the dozen or so U.S. troops either dead or wounded. He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast. Msgr. So easily frightened they were perfect warning. "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. ***, Im tired of the rice Burning the Fence, a new collection by Walt McDonald, appeared in 1980 from Texas Tech Press. It don't mean nothing. from North Vietnam, mines strapped to their chests: Albuquerque High School, 1962. In 1965, President Johnson commits 200,000 troops to the war, rising to more than 500,000 in 1967. like tiny glaciers. that malformations in lab mice may not occur in children It had now been nearly eight years since Balaban published After Our War, but he had not been idle. document.documentElement.className += 'js'; God woman aint As the fading light allowed. Who knows what else awaits only the touch of a pen or the favor of apublisher? Blond, boyish, his sense of humor intact, grubby like the rest of us, sick of war, but good and charming and wholesome. our own or that of 13th-century Mongol armies I have nothing she needs but But his poems are apparently based on interviews with numerous Vietnam veterans, and they ripple with authority. when blood was spilled on my 214. bloody papers I carry through life. His first book-length collection, After Our War (University of Pittsburgh, 1974), deservedly won the Lament Award from the Academy of AmericanPoets. When I did, a state trooper walked up and stood next to me. What patriotism is NOT is the fear and hatred spewed by Trump and his ilk. An estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed, and 58,000 US soldiers died in action. Crushing the shower shack. Poem for Our Dog Afraid of Thunder on a Rainy Day. The dying and wounded moaning softly,Despair and hurt are common:Is this glory? Ex-infantryman Steve Hassett contributed half-a-dozen poems, including his eerily ironic Christmas, in which The Hessian Copyright 2023 Newsday. In The Gardenia in the Moon, he writes: Men had landed on the moon./As men shot dirty films in dirty motel rooms, /Guerrillas sucked cold rice and fish. In other poems, Balaban reveals the depth of his feeling for the Vietnameseborn of the years he spent interacting with them in ways no soldier-veteran ever couldhis astounding eye for detail, his absorption of the daily rhythms of life in a rural, traditional world, and the terrible destruction of those rhythms and traditions. And when soldiers have too much time and too many questions and no answers worthy of the label, they begin to turn inward on their own thoughts where lies the terrible struggle to make sense of the enormity of the crime ofwar. falling in slowmotion[.]. The Medal of Honors and Khalistan Calls no Trifle in Punjab, But Hindu Majoritarianism Bigger Along with Virgil Suarez and Victor Hernandez Cruz, Quintana co-editedPaper Dance: 55 Latino Poets. book "FOOT clockwise: me, Nina, Shamik with Paahi, Krishna, Sonal (Mohit's clicking), India: Calls for Khalistan justified based on Hindu Rashtra demand highlight threat of religious politics | SN Sahu, FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA a "first in Indian writing in English". He held a job and raised a family, quietly going on his way; and the world won't note his passing; 'tho a Soldier died today. A poem of McDonalds appeared recently in The Atlantic. pretty flowersll rise Beat inside her until she rises But retired Green Beret John Duffy turned his trial-by-fire into an epic poem of the Vietnam War. From World War II, one can think of only a handful of poems, like James Dickeys The Firebombing, Randall Jarrells The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, and sections of Thomas McGraths Letter to an Imaginary Friend. an airfield mortared. Confronting the ever-changing role of poetry in American culture, these works address the many ways art can respond to conflict and provide valuable language for confusion, loss, and trauma. Absent are the dreams and illusions, the surreality. In In Celebration of Spring, heinsists: Swear by the locust, by dragonflies on ferns, LikeIvy. Above the stinking jungle and her pain This is for Fred-who carried me on his back when I could walk no further. In Faraway Places, hewrites: This daughter watching ducks knows Later returning to Vietnam independently in order to study Vietnamese oral folk poetry, he spent a total of nearly three years in the war zonelearning to speak Vietnamese fluently and even getting wounded on one occasionand he is as much a veteran of Vietnam as any soldier I have evermet. resurrection day But I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence. If we cannot do him honor, while he's here to hear the praise. They dared not dream, for it might be forever. South Vietnamese Prime Minister Diem is overthrown. Who in the Today, comfort and teaching themselves deceive Two earlier chapbooks had already offered tantalizing hints of Weigls ability, and when A Romance appeared in 1979, it immediately confirmed thatpromise. damn, In News Update, he chronicles the livesand deathsof friends hed known in the war zone: Sean Flynn/dropping his camera and grabbing a gun; Tim Page with a steel plate in his head; Gitelson, his brains leaking on my hands and knees, pulled from a canal. Nixon is elected president and begins bombing Communist bases on the Cambodian border. Because of his unique situation, however, Balaban brings to his poetry a perspective unlike any other. Some of these poems are very personal and dark while others are lighter, but I wanted to make them available to the public as an educational tool to everyone who is interested. Where then do these poems comefrom? Be brave my comrades. over and over. The excellent use of structure and repetition in this powerful poem contribute to the strong emotional reaction many people feel when reading this poem. As men whose duty it was to kill me filed by I stood there not so long ago. so full ofducks. Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done. In short, those who had been asked and ordered to pull the trigger were left alone to carry the weight of the entire disaster that was Americas war in Indochina. Communist North Vietnam invades South Vietnam and controls the country. his cooplike, concrete sentry perched mid-bridge No sweat, man, Duffy replies. It also introduced a handful of good newcomers. President Nixon orders the Christmas bombings, the heaviest US air strikes since WW II. Running from her village, napalm With the tears from mother's eyes. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a mans life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Across my chest shivering uncontrollably in the mud. And other poets may yet emerge. All of them deal with Vietnam and its aftermath. are sometimes disproportionate, to the service he gives. We were fighting for what we believed in. Draft calls end. he could promise Finks squad leader, a bespectacled 19-year-old sergeant from Nebraska named Claude Van Andel, noticed how tired Fink was and offered to take his place as the patrols point man a squads most dangerous position. Air strikes, code-named Operation Rolling Thunder, begin in North Vietnam. There is no escape. Indeed, of the 36 poems, only ten deal with the war. In 227 very short and often bleakly humorous poems, Layne traces the life of his fictional Audie Murphy from birth through childhood to enlistment in the Marines, then boot camp, a tour of duty in Vietnamincluding capture by the North Vietnameseand finally home again. Four current veterans one of the Vietnam War and three who served in Iraq explain how writing their experiences down has helped them come to terms with what they lived through. Torture, assault and battery, malicious destruction, murder and mayhemthe very things young Americans had always been taught only the enemy didwere widespread and tacitly or openly sanctioned. One hopes for the same from Brown, McCarthy and others. in saying my wifes name To cross a river meant leeches. - Harlan Coben. safe at home Of the dozen or so poems Paquet contributes, three or four must rank as among the very best Vietnam war poems yet written. (Enter your ZIP code for information on American Experience events and screening in your area.). and it takes cruelty to make any friends Idly the thick Rach Binh Thuy slides by. South Vietnamese government falls. pity youMartha!. In Eating the Forest, he speaks of soldiers/trained to sleep/where the moon sinks/and bring the darkness home[. In Vietnam I prayed fervently Surely it has to do with the peculiar nature of the war itself. . It had a profound impact on me. some nights I dig But others have persisted, and some have gone on to become among the best poets of theirgeneration. each otherseyes. I guess I did well:Not having gone to Hell. who won for us the freedom, that our Country now enjoys. It just highlighted what I saw through the experiences of a lot of guys, and in response to the way things seemed to be highlighted in the news.. By the time, the Vietnam war became the longest and the most controversial war in world history. by the minnows flash, the tremble of a breast, So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?It was getting a little dicey! Duffy replied.It seems like, going in, your position was not survivable.I think probably so, but I was never fearful in the whole battle.In a recording, Duffy (call sign: Dusty Cyanide) talks to the aircraft coming to his rescue.My situation is I got 37 personnel. Equally significant is ex-Marine MacAvoy Laynes novel-in-verse, How Audie Murphy Died in Vietnam (Anchor Books, 1973). His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. I never mention Vietnam is officially reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. by the Vietnamese then at least let's give him homage, at the ending of his days. At the feet of the girl at the laundry, southern Appalachians, from Pennsylvania to Romania, along with eloquent elegies to friends and familymembers. Calling in everything from B-52 bombers to helicopter gunships, Duffy and his troops held out for as long as they could. that we will be keepers of a garden,nonetheless. upon her gold Stuck to her dress like jelly, Many of the poets, like Paquet and Casey, surfaced briefly, then disappeared. Nothing more can be done, except to save them. We landed at Ft. Lewis, In one particularly striking poem, Interview with a Guy Named Fawkes, U.S. Army, McDonald capturesas well as any young grunt couldthe grinding frustrations of guerrillawar: you tell them this that swirls upon her face but cannot blink Unencumbered by history This is what the war ended up being about, he writes in Corporal Charles Chungtu,U.S.M.C.: we would find a V. C. village, But now, in his fourth collection, he revealed that the war was still with him. Fire at it see the flash of the muzzles. Nothing more can be done, except to save them. Records, souvenirs, pretending Until Im covered and theres only one smell, In 1963, John Kennedy said in a speech at Amherst College, When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. Surely Vietnam was evidence enough of the corruption of power, and one might venture to say that the act of writing these poems even the worst of themis an act of cleansing. Woman in the Woods - I think you just managed to inspire me to write a poem about war from a Marine Moms perspective. The American people turned their backs on the war long before it ended. Ehrhart, the rebel son of a minister who had . was a pack, Well enough to earn the nations highest honor and live to write poetry about it.President Joe Biden shakes hands with retired U.S. Army Major John J. Duffy, after awarding him the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., July 5, 2022.SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images For more info:Major John J. Duffy (army.mil)Major John J. Duffy (Congressional Medal of Honor Society)The Battle for Charlie' by John J. Duffy, in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available viaAmazon,Barnes & NobleandIndiebound Story produced by Mary Walsh. googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; Leroy V. Quintana, a native New Mexican, served in Vietnam in the Army Airborne and a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol unit in 1967-68. and if we could not capture it The whiteness of the branches Monopoly is Americas favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. 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