turned out to be a swarm of fireflies. biggest tells you you're on a new trail, Editor: Ed Givnish. An event that stunned the nation and forced an examination of U.S. military training and tactics. I never mention An estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed, and 58,000 US soldiers died in action. You have read 1 of 10 free articles in the past 30 days. Where then do these poems comefrom? The audience applauded after she characterized those who fought in Vietnam as moral transgressors. Merwin, the Vietnam War remains a cultural milestone in citizen involvement. as men whose duty it was to kill me filed by. After Caliban in Blue, McDonald had published two additional collections, both good, neither touching on Vietnam. Bowels and a heart that sings So I can stay here beside you, To suggest further additions, please contact us. var googletag = googletag || {}; if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[970,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-box-4','ezslot_4',113,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-box-4-0');CreateSpace PublishingBe brave my comrades. Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand. Your wet clothes piled Casey, a former military policeman, works exclusively with the truncated matter-of-fact speech rhythms that mirror the Vietnam grunts favorite phrase: There it isno further explanation offered. Another former medic, Berry offers a vision of the war in which hope (and almost everything else) appears in lowercase: the boys ma said may Among his many awards and decorations were 29 for valor. 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. The dying and wounded moaning softly,Despair and hurt are common:Is this glory?Martin said, Thats a good question: Is this glory?Is this glory? How can peace be in a greencountry? a kite, a mannikin playing the guitar, This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. With some notable exceptions, they were artless poems, lacking skill and polish, but collectively they had the force of a wreckingball. Progress was measured in grisly official body counts, and any dead Vietnamese was a Viet Cong. You killed the enemy or the enemy killed you. In Faraway Places, hewrites: This daughter watching ducks knows ] In Still Later There Are War Stories, he warns: We grow The battle raged back and forth. Windy sighs. Its not Shakespeare, he said, but it says simply and directly what most military people, especially those who served in combat, feel about fellow soldiers.. damn, Perhaps just a simple headline, in the paper that might say: To all our Soldiers past and present, God Bless, Glory to the American Flag, long may she wave, So many have been covered with her when they've, So many of us have taken for granted that our, We tend to forget those who have kept that, While some of us sit at home and refuse to, While a Soldier pushes that aside to continue, Some sit around and complain about the food, While you sit around and complain about what, Remember what a Soldier somewhere for you is, A Soldier stands tall and proud and ready for, In Our Hearts, In Our Prayers, In Our Minds For All Time. Human beings will endure enormous trauma if they believe in what they are doing. No, it was a combat, said Duffy.Major John J. Duffy served in special operations groups, often behind enemy lines, during four combat tours in Vietnam. Even before 1972 ended, D. C. Berrys saigon cemetery appeared from the University of Georgia Press. was a pack, they fire on us. By Daniel H. Weiss. But for others in the volume, and for Vietnam-related poetry in general, Winning Hearts and Minds proved to be only the forerunner for a body Anchored in red morning mist a narrow junk What patriotism is NOT is the fear and hatred spewed by Trump and his ilk. The type of day that dogs don't understand. Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. Her hands reaching for the no one And because the war dragged on and on in ever-escalating stalemate for weeks and months and years, there was time and more than enough time for soldiers to think about the predicament in which they found themselves. Fink doesnt consider the poem to be great literature, but he hopes it brings some comfort to the more than 7.3 million living veterans who served during the Vietnam War. It died a damned hard time. - Earnest Hemingway, (18991961). I have watched children starve from my golden towers. Here we are at Vietnam. Bones Plus, I was 62, and the Vietnamese are typically about 56, Duffy said. that swirls upon her face but cannot blink He has won an Academy of American Poets Prize . was ourvillage. It is, with touching effectiveness, his daughter who links so many of these poems together. 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". I guess I did well:Not having gone to Hell. 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. They came in hissing, Equally significant is ex-Marine MacAvoy Laynes novel-in-verse, How Audie Murphy Died in Vietnam (Anchor Books, 1973). sucking sound a rocket makes whenit. Your poem gives a strong voice for those affected by war. And your platoon moves out without you, 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. Pulling the trigger is all we have. Next time I see you I owe you a big bottle of scotch. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_0',117,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_1',117,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0_1');if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1','ezslot_2',117,'0','2'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-large-mobile-banner-1-0_2');.large-mobile-banner-1-multi-117{border:none!important;display:block!important;float:none!important;line-height:0;margin-bottom:15px!important;margin-left:auto!important;margin-right:auto!important;margin-top:15px!important;max-width:100%!important;min-height:250px;min-width:300px;padding:0;text-align:center!important}. Intestines poured Absent are the dreams and illusions, the surreality. Perhaps because he has come to terms with the worst, he can also now remember with a certain amusement The Girl Pero detrs del mito de su creacin hay una historia sin contar sobre un robo, una obsesin y un doble juego corporativo. We watched - Harlan Coben. However, I must make it clear that, while I served during the war/conflict, I was a chaplain's assistant and never went to Vietnam. she is burned behind my eyes View of American troops from the 173rd Airborne Brigade as they exit a helicopter 40 miles south of Saigon, Vietnam, August 1965. Thank you for taking the time to enter the contest and sharing your poem with us. see the flash of the muzzles. embarrasses me. when he walked up 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. the Army, 'On Getting Out of Vietnam' was written in 1972 and was included in Nemerov's award-winning book of poetry, The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, published in 1977.The title clearly hints at the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam during 1970-1973. Eases, and your pain, andmine. Democrats are more nuanced--more in line with this poem. some nights I dig document.documentElement.className += 'js'; A second influential anthology of Vietnam War poetry, edited from five thousand submissions by W.D. . Nguyen Chi Thien, Whose Poems Spoke Truth to Power, From a Cell, Dies at 73. Some of the poems are as short asGuns: When the M-16 rifle had a stoppage, He didn't die because he was sick, or he didn't die because he was in a wreck. Only a little more than a yard away may she never She does not feel his claim his home, his kin, and Country, and would fight until the end? that as we grow old, we will not grow evil, It had a profound impact on me. The excellent use of structure and repetition in this powerful poem contribute to the strong emotional reaction many people feel when reading this poem. a yellow fish eating a bird, a truck that was not a village any more I hear a child. Don't wait to tell the important people in your life how you feel about them, do it right away. I've never been a killing kind of man. But we'll hear his tales no longer, for ol' Bob has passed away. an airfield mortared. Some, however, stand out more sharply than others. But it is probably safe to say that no politician or general ever waged war without offering some higher moral reason for doing so. . Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate, Where that comes in that shall not go again; Love sells the proud heart's citadel to Fate. ***, Im tired of the rice Wets her face. . to a corporal, and he did. His Seen seventy-odd years pass by on this planet. a way to throw off thedead. Jean Libby. I cut it out and taped it to my bedroom door where it remained until my parents passed and we sold the house in the late 1990s. Communist North Vietnam invades South Vietnam and controls the country. The war killed him . I know what it is like to be so afraid Literate without being literary, Paquet was, at the time, far and away the most It is my sincere wish that someone will find these heart-felt writings useful. And ghostlylaughter. Charles Fink leads Our Lady of Snow Roman Catholic Church in Blue Point. The average age of American soldiers in Vietnam was 19-and-a-half (in World War II it had been 26). in saying my wifes name I can tell true stories/of the jungle, he writes in When I Am 19 I Was aMedic: I sleep strapped to a .45, Chocolate steamed I had read it when it was first published in 1996 and it has stuck with me, as has the utterly savage U.S. war against Vietnam that killed so many millions, what the Vietnamese call The American War. Indeed, of the 36 poems, only ten deal with the war. Major John J. Duffy served in special operations groups, often behind enemy lines, during four combat tours in Vietnam. Who likes blood and gore. The "b" on Howell's typewriter didn't work. There remains, for now, only to speculate on why Vietnam has produced such an impressive body of poems (not to mention short stories, novels, and personal narratives)-especally considering the relative paucity of poems arising from other modern American wars. got measured, issued new dress uniforms Mason, 46, was a spiritual POW for almost two decades after his body came home. That's what my writings reflect. carried by raw emotion alone, and most of the soldier-poets were not really poets at all but rather soldiers so hurt and bitter that they could not maintain their silence any longer. on a rain-soaked day such as this. are sometimes disproportionate, to the service he gives. You did a good job. 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. Idly the thick Rach Binh Thuy slides by. A VC moving slowly in the elephant grass their damp flutes, Then the village It sounds like going in you knew this was a battle to the death, said Martin. Then, he sums up his own career, starting as a 17-year-old private and ending as a major with four combat tours. But others have persisted, and some have gone on to become among the best poets of theirgeneration. In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is erected in Washington, DC. Men taught to believe that American soldiers handed out candy to kids found themselves killing and being killed by those very kids. The politician's stipend and the style in which he lives. While Balabans poems offer little comfort, they have much to teach. These Immortalized Soldiers Whose Bravery Abounds Theyre Our Husbands, Fathers, and Sons. what release? So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?. . Most of the poems in Winning Hearts and Minds are 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. He must be destroyed!Martin said, That antenna was like a kill me sign.Plus, I was 62, and the Vietnamese are typically about 56, Duffy said.The air strikes he called in were the only thing keeping badly-outnumbered South Vietnamese troops from being overrun. In remembrance of American involvement in Vietnam, the Poetry Foundation has assembled a selection of poems from our archives that address the conflict and its aftermath. It temains as relevant today as it did then. The firefight that followed left most of the dozen or so U.S. troops either dead or wounded. He was just a common Soldier and his ranks are growing thin. Over their nose***, No jaw to put your gear on and hear shots, Poems from and about the American involvement in Vietnam. a rifle, and What can be said with certainty is that these are accomplished poems by a skilled practitioner. floating in urine, a rat carrying a banjo, to leave such gold, he thinks. And other poets may yet emerge. But the two most noteworthy poets in the collection are Paquet and Michael Casey. Again, one finds the particular hallmark of the very best of In Vietnam I prayed fervently The air strikes he called in were the only thing keeping badly-outnumbered South Vietnamese troops from being overrun. The contrast is even more remarkable when one considers how very few members of the Vietnam Generation ever actually While continuing the tone set by the earlier Winning Hearts and Minds, this later collection lifted the literary merit of the offerings a notch or two.In "Guerrilla War," W.D. After our war, the dismembered bits Msgr. What else can we do? Katie Greeter Team Leader 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 As your mucosity dries on my lips I think this poem was published some time before 1972 before I went to college.I cant remember the magazine (probably TIME). pity youMartha!. hang around as a big dark cloud. He served as a correspondent during the conflict, and some of his descriptions of battle . Past the olive drab Duffy was the lone American advisor to a battalion of South Vietnamese paratroopers sent to hold Fire Base Charlie. recruiter, It had a profound impact on me. Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images. Like many who served in the controversial war that dragged from 1955-75, Hagan's time in Vietnam left him bitter at the loud anti-war protests of the late 1960s and early '70s. Ehrhart (image on the left), was aptly called Carrying the Darkness. And not your good love and not the rain-swept air South Vietnamese Prime Minister Diem is overthrown. The whiteness of the branches upon her gold School children walk by, he writes in OnDeath: Some stare Monopoly is Americas favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. I wrote the poem within a few days of that. LI priest's poem about Vietnam War endures. God I had just moved into Florida from Tennessee. November 20, 2019. O for tonight Because of his unique situation, however, Balaban brings to his poetry a perspective unlike any other. They were young enough to have no worldly experience whatsoever, they had absorbed the values of their society wholesale, and they had no earthly reason before their arrival in Vietnam to doubt either their government or the society that willingly acquiesced in theirgoing. Bobrowsky, Cross, and Purcell contribute powerful poems. On a rain-soaked day such as this. Of credulous hearts, in heavensuch are but taking. Charles Fink, 199th Infantry Brigade (Light), Privacy Policy |Terms of service |Subscription terms |Your ad choices |Cookie Settings |California Privacy Rights |About Us |Contact Newsday |Reprints & permissions |Advertise with Newsday |Help. And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors, his tales became a joke. Until Im covered and theres only one smell, Substitute Afghanistan for Vietnam and it is current.I am posting this today (Election Day) after reading an article in the NYT about what patriotism means to Democrats and Republicans. the fun, our sense of humor In late March 2003, while standing outside Nasiriyah, Iraq, former Marine Sgt. Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History (espaol). "Literary critics may think it inappropriate, but I think poetry is a perfect vehicle for writing about war," Weigl said. A poet had better keep his mouth shut, he writes in Saying Good-by to Mr. and Mrs. My, Saigon,1972: unless hes found words to comfort and teach. They dared not dream, for it might be forever. who won for us the freedom, that our Country now enjoys. Out of the stomach Komunyakaa's Vietnam poems are to be found in 1988's Dien Cai Dau (a Vietnamese expression for "crazy"). All of them deal with Vietnam and its aftermath. the Units of our Conflict -- all Conflicts. ***. Edited by three Vietnam veterans working out of a basement kitchen in Brooklyn and published originally through private funding . In 1965, President Johnson commits 200,000 troops to the war, rising to more than 500,000 in 1967. Public obscenity likethis[.]. Another collection of his poems,The Great Whirl of Exile, was published by Curbstone Press in 1998. The American people turned their backs on the war long before it ended. ***. His son had died nine thousand miles away, I was in the Florida State Drivers license office building getting my new drivers license. You killed the enemy or the enemy killed you. These poems are available in a book format. came squinting, wobbling, jabberingback. :-D Thanks a lot! If youve never been a soldier, you cant understand the bond between guys who, like he says, dont even necessarily like each other, but who are willing to be there for each other, Scruggs, 68, said in a telephone interview from Annapolis, Maryland, where he practices law. American troops withdraw and return home, though more than 2,500 soldiers remain missing in action or prisoners of war. to take us to the airport. The VC only a little more than a whisper's reach away, Pasture unfolding before us can denyit. Im afraid to hold a gun now, wrote Charles M. Purcell, holder of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, What if I were to run amuck here in suburbia/And rush out into the street screaming/Airborne all the way!/And shoot themilkman.. skillful and practiced of the soldier-poets. I lay down in it But his poems are wonderfully powerful, often intimately personal and sensitive. walking slowly, scratching. Threw stones at a cobra once, There is no escape. Also a trained anthropologist, Hurston collected folklore throughout the South and Caribbean reclaiming, honoring and celebrating Black life on its own terms. Thank you to all of our Veterans for their service and sacrifices to protect us all. Vietnam is officially reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It was said the NVAs carried flashlights. Oh, big sighs. warped it out of place You're far from home. I like a little unaccustomed mercy. The shortest poem in the book is LEclatante Victoire de KheSanh: The main thing Unlike his earlier Vietnam poems, however, these few tackle the war straight up. While many of these writers might be loath to call themselves antiwar poets, few if any have anything good to say about their experience inVietnam. Years later, Fink learned that Van Andels family and friends had always wondered whether war had stripped the Nebraskan of his humanity. Shivering uncontrollably in the mud You have been followed. with benediction Ehrhart, the rebel son of a minister who had . what do they know back where As the fading light allowed. At nineteen I stood at night and watched happened to be a water buffalo. Howell's vocabulary grew in Vietnam. pretty flowersll rise I wanted to paint the picture of the action and a panorama of the combat there, he replied. But he chose to do his alternative service in Vietnam, first as a teacher of linguistics at the University of Can Tho, then as field representative for the Committee of Responsibility to Save War-Injured Children. Where the Unknown Soldier lies, And the flowers there are sprinkled. speaking French Then drops his aim. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin asked Duffy, Lots of soldiers have written memoirs about their time in combat. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. More durable a poetindeed, one of the very bestis John Balaban. Fred was a selfless and wonderful young man. then at least let's give him homage, at the ending of his days. Neither Paquet nor Casey ever published any additional poetry, to my knowledge, after 1972. Every time weve broke out trying to leave here, we got fired upon.One pilot informs him he is low on fuel and has to leave. and he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past. To cross a river meant leeches. cannons twice as fast as the old gunships. Only now I cant fly. Some keep on walking I wrote a tribute to my son on Facebook for veterans day.but it wasn't poetry. This famous poem was written here in Huntington. This is for Fred-who carried me on his back when I could walk no further. sidling heel and toe in graceful Out of that hole and ran Current Location. my rear when they piss about 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. I checked. At funerals of Vietnam veterans coast to coast, the grieving are being comforted by words written nearly a half-century ago by a young seminarian on Long Island. writing class, include The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. With the tears from mother's eyes. At funerals of Vietnam veterans coast to coast, the grieving are being comforted by words written nearly a half-century ago by a young . Kill or die is our fate.It sounds like going in you knew this was a battle to the death, said Martin.We were given orders to fight to the death, Duffy replied.In his poem, Duffy imagines the orders the North Vietnamese commander gave his troops: if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[580,400],'sandhillsexpress_com-banner-1','ezslot_5',114,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-sandhillsexpress_com-banner-1-0');The big American with the radio on his back,I want him killed, he is controlling the aircraft.He is attacking our anti-aircraft and artillery guns.He moves often. You look quickly around you: long since fled or buried In The Sound of Guns, hewrites: At the university in town By the time United States troops withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, the Vietnam War had become one of the longest, most controversial conflicts in American history. keep track of time spent, A poem of McDonalds appeared recently in The Atlantic. we fire on. The Line Between Innocence and Immorality. "My appreciation for my father's greatness cannot be measured.". Christian Langworthy. 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. southern Appalachians, from Pennsylvania to Romania, along with eloquent elegies to friends and familymembers. The dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien in 2008 in California. No, it was a combat, said Duffy.Major John J. Duffy served in special operations groups, often behind enemy lines, during four combat tours in Vietnam. #4. mad1982 said: Perhaps it refers to something hypothetical, unreal.? Former medic Brown is particularly interesting, having remained in the Army from 1968 to 1977, and one can only wonder why he stayed in and why he got out. Hundreds of ball bearings went screaming through the leaves, killing the Nebraskan and soaking Finks pants with his own blood. That represent all // cutting the mustard Our children slept. None of his words had "b" in them. All rights reserved. At her. 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. ./Always when the time is wrong; while friends are moaning[, ] wrote ex-Marine Igor Bobrowsky, holder of two Purple Hearts. think it forgiven Americas bicentennial year brought the publication of Bryan Alec Floyds The Long War Dead (Avon), a collection of 47 poems, each given the name of a fictitious member of 1st Platoon, U.S.M.C. Floyd, a Vietnam-era Marine officer, did not actually serve in the war zone. is paid off with a medal and perhaps a pension, small. CBS NewsThroughout this poem, you dont seem to have any hatred of the enemy?No, no. that have been cut along the way It don't mean nothing. I watched a father try to hold back his tears, His son had lived only a scant 19 years. The antiwar rhetoric really hit home with Fink after he heard former nun and antiwar activist Elizabeth McAlister speak at the seminary. But if some of the non-Vietnam poems occasionally reveal the graduate student laboring to flex his intellectual muscle, they also reveal the poets ability to transcend Vietnam and reach out to the wider world aroundhim. It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. I am the last person you will touch. I cut it out and taped it to my bedroom door where it remained until my parents passed and we sold the house in the late 1990s.It temains as relevant today as it did then. in mugs we wrapped and it takes cruelty to make any friends In Eating the Forest, he speaks of soldiers/trained to sleep/where the moon sinks/and bring the darkness home[. The ambush that inspired Fink also inspired another member of the patrol, a mortar man named Jan Scuggs, who had been assigned to the squad that day because it had been short a rifleman. rocks its weight, A woman kneels on deck 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. two children eating rice, 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.. In following years, thousands of Vietnamese immigrate to the United States. It's not often (if ever) a recipient of the Medal of Honor is also a published poet. he learned to pay much closer watch Howells was the Colonel's aide. 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. Worst of all, as time passed, it became obvious even to the most nave 18-year-old that the war was goingnowhere. Now I feel really sick. It wont matter then to me but now turned out to be artillery rounds. We were fighting for what we believed in. Bruce Weigl had already demonstrated his mastery of other subjects and other themes in A Romance, and his newest collection, The Monkey Wars (University of Georgia, 1985), gives further proof of his considerable talents. The US concludes peace agreements. 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