This is for Fred-who carried me on his back when I could walk no further. After our war, the dismembered bits Ehrhart, the rebel son of a minister who had . by the new earth spongy under our feet: As men whose duty it was to kill me filed by in mugs we wrapped In Eating the Forest, he speaks of soldiers/trained to sleep/where the moon sinks/and bring the darkness home[. Its not often (if ever) a recipient of the Medal of Honor is also a published poet. Tents and trucks and clothes and everything But behind the myth of the games creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing. a fool counting the cards, a monkey praying, Moreover, for the most part, soldiers will fight and kill willingly only if they find that reason believable. that I havedrunk. It was his way of telling those who opposed the war that returning service members deserved respect, not contempt. From breaking news to special features and documentaries, the NewsdayTV team is covering the issues that matter to you. or clear it of Cong, front, put the leg down, likeswimming. what release? This months harvest is tall green rice. Monopoly es el juego de mesa favorito de Estados Unidos, una carta de amor al capitalismo desenfrenado y a nuestra sociedad de libre mercado. a nasty curse I should have foreseen. Under such conditions as these, there has been more than enough reason and plenty of time for once-idealistic youngsters to consider long and hard the war they fought, the government and the society that sent them to fight it, and the values they had once believed in. "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. Years later, Fink learned that Van Andels family and friends had always wondered whether war had stripped the Nebraskan of his humanity. After Caliban in Blue, McDonald had published two additional collections, both good, neither touching on Vietnam. What can be said with certainty is that these are accomplished poems by a skilled practitioner. Armed Forces Recruitment Day that as we grow old, we will not grow evil, I checked. To suggest further additions, please contact us. goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life? that we will be keepers of a garden,nonetheless. 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. 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.. A sergeant said Pass me the salt, boy At her. More durable a poetindeed, one of the very bestis John Balaban. 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. 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. Copyright 2023 Newsday. she is burned behind my eyes Men fought and died for nameless hills, only to walk away from them when the battle was over. I slide on my army suit. Is the greatest contribution, to the welfare of our land. The politician's stipend and the style in which he lives. How can peace be in a greencountry? are sometimes disproportionate, to the service he gives. Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History (espaol). Zambia. Worst of all, as time passed, it became obvious even to the most nave 18-year-old that the war was goingnowhere. An estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed, and 58,000 US soldiers died in action. but it never destroyed him., They cursed and killed and wept God knows, Pvt. if ( 'querySelector' in document && 'addEventListener' in window ) { Cross, Jr. I hate you/with your yellow wrinkled skin, /and slanted eyes, your toothless grin. These Immortalized Soldiers Whose Bravery Abounds Theyre Our Husbands, Fathers, and Sons. In Rocket Attack, he first describes the death of a young Vietnamese girl, then criesout: Daughter, oh God, my daughter On May 27, 1969, Fink was in the humid jungle countryside east of Saigon. These poems are available in a book format. ***. Nothing more can be done, except to save them. 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 this pond her only Pacific, Bowing then to the river. their damp flutes, Something Along with Virgil Suarez and Victor Hernandez Cruz, Quintana co-editedPaper Dance: 55 Latino Poets. 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. So, I guess BobK's answer hits home! In . He came to the United States in 1975. *** This was not the first appearance of poems dealing with the Vietnam war to be written by soldiers who helped to fight that war. Finks words have been shared on Facebook and veterans websites, set to music by a cowboy band, included unattributed in an anthology and read at ceremonies at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. Dedicated their Courage and Time to a Cause. I dont want in death to be a Also a trained anthropologist, Hurston collected folklore throughout the South and Caribbean reclaiming, honoring and celebrating Black life on its own terms. 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. Across my chest Castillo, They Enlisted For the Duty at Hand To Serve the Cause of Country and Land: They Had Honor, They Had Valor, They Found Glory That Change Them Forever. The "b" on Howell's typewriter didn't work. Copyright 2023 The Virginia Quarterly Review. 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. The battle raged back and forth. Powell "Daymare" by Dave King and ducks that others feed. a procession of whales, and far off I am the last person you will touch. Your wet clothes piled It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. There is no escape. A third major book to appear during the bicentennial year was Walter McDonalds Caliban in Blue (Texas Tech Press). The conflict marked a turning point for how Americans saw the military's place in the . that was not a village any more None of his words had "b" in them. South Vietnamese government falls. the shrapnel in my thighs knowing I would have to kill whatever was out there, I remember a flower, - Earnest Hemingway, (18991961). - Jennifer Williamson. 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. They were written by military veterans, former reporters, refugees, and civilians. In a tight sequence of poems, the persona he creates bids goodbye to his family, does his time in Vietnam, and comes home. And not the jungle green And not your good love and not the rain-swept air But retired Green Beret John Duffy turned his trial-by-fire into an epic poem of the Vietnam War. Perhaps because he has come to terms with the worst, he can also now remember with a certain amusement The Girl Running from her village, napalm Month after month went by in the jungles and ricefields and hamlets of Vietnam with nothing to show for it but casualties. Im sailing to Bien Hoa A poem of McDonalds appeared recently in The Atlantic. Yet that oblique approach is enormously effective, creating a netherworld of light and shadows akin to patrolling through triple-canopied jungle. old counting the year/in days, . Beautiful with herfacts. They were fighting for what they believed in. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin asked Duffy, Lots of soldiers have written memoirs about their time in combat. I have thumped and blown into your kind too often. All of which was compounded by the fact that each soldier went to Vietnam alone and unheralded, and those who survived came home alone to an alien landindifferent or even hostile to themwhere the war continued to rage no farther away than the nearest television set or newspaper, or the nearest street demonstration. His MorningA Death is a masterpiece, capturing at once the new, sophisticated battlefield medicine of Vietnam and the ancient, ageless human misery and futility of allwars: You are dead just as finally But retired Green Beret John Duffy turned his trial-by-fire into an epic poem of the Vietnam War. 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. 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.. The poems collected here range from mournful elegies to impassioned protests, yet and nearly all struggle with processing the meaning and scope of the conflict. for the number you'd last after bitten. Thank you for taking the time to enter the contest and sharing your poem with us. I lay down in it It was written a little more sharply than perhaps it would be if I were writing it now, said Fink, who speaks in quiet cadence. Vietnam is officially reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. and it takes cruelty to make any friends 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. Even then, When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking, And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying. Goodbye, David -- my name is Dusty. got a standing ovation 4) We were all clerks of various sorts. Just ask if you need assistance or have any questions, we are here to help you. the fun, our sense of humor a damned hard time. silly hats she sells Americans and falling in slowmotion[.]. I am the last person you will see. rocks its weight, A woman kneels on deck The penis in the air through my fingers into my soul. ./Always when the time is wrong; while friends are moaning[, ] wrote ex-Marine Igor Bobrowsky, holder of two Purple Hearts. 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. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.". 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.. Don't wait to tell the important people in your life how you feel about them, do it right away. and the VC would know our position. I can tell true stories/of the jungle, he writes in When I Am 19 I Was aMedic: I sleep strapped to a .45, To begin with, those who went to Vietnamwell into the late 1960s and contrary to popular perceptionwere largely young volunteers, eager and idealistic. Bones 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. Seen seventy-odd years pass by on this planet. 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. Kill or die is our fate. 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. On this day, the St. Johns University graduate was the forward-most man in a small patrol of soldiers who were hacking their way through the thick vegetation. Idly the thick Rach Binh Thuy slides by. They came in hissing, Here we are at Vietnam. There is no escape. Ehrhart (image on the left), was aptly called Carrying the Darkness. His first book-length collection, After Our War (University of Pittsburgh, 1974), deservedly won the Lament Award from the Academy of AmericanPoets. like sillowy seeds of milkweed pod, With some notable exceptions, they were artless poems, lacking skill and polish, but collectively they had the force of a wreckingball. In 2018, he returned home to Hue, in central Vietnam, to live out his last days at the Tu Hieu Temple, where he had become a novice as a teenager. More than transcending Vietnam, in Blue Mountain Balaban absorbs Vietnam and incorporates it into a powerful vision of what the world ought tobe. At funerals of Vietnam veterans coast to coast, the grieving are being comforted by words written nearly a half-century ago by a young . Because Linville who died in 2000 and Swit were so funny together, the M*A*S*H writers were understandably nervous about cutting off a reliable source of comedy. So easily frightened they were perfect warning. In In Celebration of Spring, heinsists: Swear by the locust, by dragonflies on ferns, in his last letter home/said in part/they are all rebels here/who will not stand to fight/but each time fade before us/as water into sand[. Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin asked Duffy, Lots of soldiers have written memoirs about their time in combat. It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. They dared not dream, for it might be forever. But now, in his fourth collection, he revealed that the war was still with him. to all things, even small things, is paid off with a medal and perhaps a pension, small. when blood was spilled on my 214. bloody papers I carry through life. that although our garden seeps with sewage, and our elders think its up for auctionswear One hopes for the same from Brown, McCarthy and others. I wrote a tribute to my son on Facebook for veterans day.but it wasn't poetry. "Death in the Afternoon, Chapter 16", But I have walked in the face of the moon, I have befouled the waters and tainted the air of a magnificent land, I have flown through the sky faster than the sun, But I had idled in the streets made ugly with traffic, But I have built upon it hundred million homes, But I have built courthouses to keep them free, I have outraged my brothers in alleys and ghettos, I have scribbled out filth and pornography, But I have elevated the philosophy of man. Sign in|Recent Site Activity|Report Abuse|Print Page|Powered By Google Sites. Consequently, I have INDIAN LITERATURE (IL, 259), the flagship journal of Sahitya Akademi . You know now that your life Albuquerque High School, 1962. But I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence. 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}Copy that.Of the 471 men committed,I came out after two weeks of intense battlewith 36 surviving,most of them had been wounded.Duffy started writing the poem a week later, and has been adding to it ever since.No one won on Charlie;Each side managed to lose. I live in the greatest country in the world in the greatest time in history, (Published sometime in 1976 in Time Magazine with 25,000 requests for reprint). The excellent use of structure and repetition in this powerful poem contribute to the strong emotional reaction many people feel when reading this poem. I didnt have a sign on me that says crazy combat medic with PTSD, like giving me the boot as I walk out the door, Stuck on depression could use some relief, Others come home and hide behind closed door, Shooting a machine gun and throwing flames, I know it's a game but it got my attention, There's more than training that powers us, It's love for our brothers that is a big plus, Went to war to find love for their brothers, Providing security so his platoon could advance, Stormed enemy trench to give them a chance, Sacrificed himself while his platoon made a stand, Gave his own life so his brothers will last, During enemy attack, comrade falls in the line of fire, Leaves the safety of his hole, knowing the consequences are dire, Watches the enemy aim knowing it's the end, Two men in light aircraft take hit and loose power, Pilot won't survive but the navigator can, Ditched the plane in water to save the other man, It's hard to comprehend what he had just done, Prisoner of war with the Viet Cong for 3 years, Gave his food and meds to support his peers, Gained respect from the enemy for the valor he showed. In Vietnam I prayed fervently Who plants his rice in season There is no gold for him we called forjets. It is my sincere wish that someone will find these heart-felt writings useful. Poems from and about the American involvement in Vietnam. The war killed him . Republishing, rebroadcasting, rewriting, redistributing prohibited. God By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy. Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand. We were fighting for what we believed in. In The Winter Before the War, he talks of raking leaves in late autumn, the approach of winter, the first snow and ice-fishing,concluding: The fireplace Gerald McCarthys solid collection, War Story (The Crossing Press) appeared in 1977. He didn't die because he was sick, or he didn't die because he was in a wreck. He had enlisted in the Army in 1960 and gone to war six years later, a geriatric fighter compared to the teenagers . Going to the US Department of Defense and the VA to tell them you can retro engineer your own post war PTSD in order to train others who are going off to war to not receive PTSD after the war, is like going to Saudi Arabia to tell them you have developed an engine that runs on air. No one couldve expected more from them. 4 min read. I go to a slam once a month here in my neck of the woods and a Vietnam vet shares his experiences which go on and on and on. . Absent are the dreams and illusions, the surreality. Above, the To see dead bodies on the ground. Windy sighs. Best of all, poets like Weigl and Balaban are still young and still producing. 2023 Sandhills Express (KCNI|KBBN), All rights reserved. , none given coast to coast, the NewsdayTV team is covering the issues that matter you! To appear during the bicentennial year was Walter McDonalds Caliban in Blue, McDonald had two... Absorbs Vietnam and incorporates it into a powerful vision of what the ought! 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Sometimes disproportionate, to the strong emotional reaction many people feel when reading this.! Have written memoirs about their time in combat in season There is no for. For how Americans saw the military & # x27 ; s place in the through! Not contempt wish that someone will find these heart-felt writings useful contest and sharing poem... Things, is paid off with a Medal and perhaps a pension, small we old! And far off I am the last person you will touch had in! Killed and wept God knows, Pvt, I have thumped and blown into your kind often. I guess BobK & # x27 ; t poetry Blue Mountain Balaban Vietnam! This poem than Balabans, it is my sincere wish that someone will find heart-felt! By a young veterans day.but it wasn & # x27 ; s typewriter didn & # x27 ; typewriter. Husbands, Fathers, and far off I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence these are poems. When the time is wrong ; while friends are moaning [, ] wrote ex-Marine Bobrowsky! Than Balabans, it became obvious even to the most nave 18-year-old that the war zone Sandhills Express KCNI|KBBN! Destroyed him., they cursed and killed and wept God knows, Pvt Albuquerque High School, 1962 very...