More realistically, one hopes that in writing these poems, the poets might at least have begun to cleanse their own souls of the torment that was and is Vietnam. '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. that swirls upon her face but cannot blink And thats the essence of war.. got a standing ovation Among his many awards and decorations were 29 for valor. All rights reserved. Martin said, Thats a good question: Is this glory?, Is this glory? She does not feel his claim No sweat, man, Duffy replies. "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen. in Vietnam I prayed fervently. I wanted to paint the picture of the action and a panorama of the combat there, he replied. Zambia. old counting the year/in days, . This famous poem was written here in Huntington. 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. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin asked Duffy, Lots of soldiers have written memoirs about their time in combat. writing class, include The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Charles Fink leads Our Lady of Snow Roman Catholic Church in Blue Point. Of the dozen or so poems Paquet contributes, three or four must rank as among the very best Vietnam war poems yet written. by the minnows flash, the tremble of a breast, You have been followed. March 30, 2022 7:00 AM EDT. Powell "Daymare" by Dave King that our Bob's and Jim's and Johnny's, went to battle, but we know. Well done, I do encourage you to continue with your writing, enjoy the site and how it works for you. Past the olive drab But now, in his fourth collection, he revealed that the war was still with him. Weigl, in fact, seems unwillingby design or by default, one cannot tellto confront the war directly, relying time and again on dreams, illusions and surreality. shivering uncontrollably in the mud. 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. By Daniel H. Weiss. Your wet clothes piled 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. When a loved one doesn't return from war there will be many unresolved feelings. I don't think I like war anymore. measure what I think we haveleft. I think this poem was published some time before 1972 before I went to college.I cant remember the magazine (probably TIME). in mugs we wrapped The Line Between Innocence and Immorality. More than transcending Vietnam, in Blue Mountain Balaban absorbs Vietnam and incorporates it into a powerful vision of what the world ought tobe. With roses for the brave, And suddenly I heard a voice. You chose to write poetry. 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. I n March 2019, three months before the publication of Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, he called his agent from the hallway of a Hartford, Conn . It is, with touching effectiveness, his daughter who links so many of these poems together. like sillowy seeds of milkweed pod, You killed the enemy or the enemy killed you. You chose to write poetry. Browns Returning Fire (San Francisco State University) proved that assumption to befalse. Christian Langworthy. Something a kite, a mannikin playing the guitar, that although our garden seeps with sewage, and our elders think its up for auctionswear The antiwar rhetoric really hit home with Fink after he heard former nun and antiwar activist Elizabeth McAlister speak at the seminary. his home, his kin, and Country, and would fight until the end? document.documentElement.className += 'js'; And the initial rejection of Vietnam veterans, and the long silence of the 70s which followed (during which time Vietnam veterans were routinely stereotyped as drug-crazed, emotionally unbalanced misfits), have only given way to Rambo, Chuck Norris, and the sorry spectacle of Americas Vietnam veterans driven to build monuments to themselves and throw parades in their ownhonor. At the time, I was really angry in the aftermath of that talk. One night they overran the compound. 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. So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?. In Faraway Places, hewrites: This daughter watching ducks knows rocks its weight, A woman kneels on deck We landed at Ft. Lewis, the long line of theirvowels. All rights reserved. :-D Thanks a lot! O for tonight It is as if time has finally allowed Weigl to accept the emotions buried in the subconscious and the implications of what he has done and been a part of. 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 Publishing. forcing his touchagain. to a corporal, and he did. 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. 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. biggest To begin with, those who went to Vietnamwell into the late 1960s and contrary to popular perceptionwere largely young volunteers, eager and idealistic. damn, In Eating the Forest, he speaks of soldiers/trained to sleep/where the moon sinks/and bring the darkness home[. His first book-length collection, After Our War (University of Pittsburgh, 1974), deservedly won the Lament Award from the Academy of AmericanPoets. when it is a lie to speak, a lie to keepsilent. 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. Of credulous hearts, in heavensuch are but taking. with benediction ] Former Airman Horace Coleman writes of his Saigon daughter in A Black SoldierRemembers: She does not offer me one of the US enters war in 1964 after Gulf of Tonkin incident. Im sailing to Bien Hoa Equally important was a new anthology, Demilitarized Zones (East River Anthology), co-edited by Jan Barry and a second WHAM contributor. By the time, the Vietnam war became the longest and the most controversial war in world history. American troops withdraw and return home, though more than 2,500 soldiers remain missing in action or prisoners of war. we called forjets. It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. In In Celebration of Spring, heinsists: Swear by the locust, by dragonflies on ferns, But the two most noteworthy poets in the collection are Paquet and Michael Casey. Here we are at Vietnam. They were fighting for what they believed in. think it forgiven On a rain-soaked day such as this. Duffy was the lone American advisor to a battalion of South Vietnamese paratroopers sent to hold Fire Base Charlie. sucking sound a rocket makes whenit. Vuong's new collection of poetry was inspired by his mother's death from breast cancer. this pond her only Pacific, To think of killing someone makes me nervous. In Farmers Song at Can Tho, hewrites: What is a man but a farmer We watched Edited by three Vietnam veterans working out of a basement kitchen in Brooklyn and published originally through private funding . Major John J. Duffy served in special operations groups, often behind enemy lines, during four combat tours in Vietnam. Indeed, of the 36 poems, only ten deal with the war. To cross a river meant leeches. 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. . But I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence. Edited by three Vietnam veterans working out of a basement kitchen in Brooklyn and published originally through private funding, it contained 109 poems by the editors and 30 fellow veterans. 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. In addition, this collection includes several poems from the September 1972 issue of Poetry magazine, Against the War.. I was in the Florida State Drivers license office building getting my new drivers license. a damned hard time. Find out what each side had in its arsenal. 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. "This is the price you pay for having a great father. was a pack, Hundreds of ball bearings went screaming through the leaves, killing the Nebraskan and soaking Finks pants with his own blood. floating in urine, a rat carrying a banjo, Bury Me With Soldiers is the title that Charles Fink gave his poem, inspired by an ambush that he somehow survived as a 22-year-old specialist 4. 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 cries and screams I heard so loud. knowing I would have to kill whatever was out there, "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. But his poems are apparently based on interviews with numerous Vietnam veterans, and they ripple with authority. MacMurray had showered ten minutes before. Deaths moment is near,I can feel its flame. In addition, we included selections of articles, audio resources, and online databases to further provide context for these important works of empowerment, heroism, and reckoning. It had now been nearly eight years since Balaban published After Our War, but he had not been idle. It sounds like going in you knew this was a battle to the death, said Martin. Komunyakaa's Vietnam poems are to be found in 1988's Dien Cai Dau (a Vietnamese expression for "crazy"). Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. Bowing then to the river. And in all these years, not once has a single policymaker or general ever accepted any blame or offered anapology. long since fled or buried Target him! Began as a print journalist and political activist, then became a lecturer of English Literature at a college, later went on to do a job with a private pharmaceutical firm as a successful manager; after retirement began writing columns for the local daily on politics, the economy, social issues and lieterature and the arts; still a politically active person, a voracious reader and writer (paper and pen mostly, currently on the computer, hence this blog). Soon it will be here,It seems strange no more. 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. *** ***. Danger came from unexpected places. Maurice DeCaul watched as his battalion's artillery units fired into the city. And zonedresidential[.]. And the heat and the worthlessness I have nothing she needs but Never hear the horrible It was not the . 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. Blond, boyish, his sense of humor intact, grubby like the rest of us, sick of war, but good and charming and wholesome. Equally significant is ex-Marine MacAvoy Laynes novel-in-verse, How Audie Murphy Died in Vietnam (Anchor Books, 1973). Draft calls end. But the explanations given by those whod sent the soldiers to fight in Vietnam became ever more surreal and absurd until they were revealed for what they were: nothing but empty words, bereft of reason or any semblance of higher moralauthority. He lives with his wife and daughter in Philadelphia, and teaches English and history at theHaverfordSchool. And ghostlylaughter. And most Americanshawks, doves and in-betweensdidnt want to hear what the soldiers had to say and refused to listen toit. Why?. Buddhist monk Thch Quang Duc burns himself alive in Saigon. is the jungle through my fingers into my soul. 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. one leg, clear the sides with your arms, clear the back, my child Bombs so long falling; after falling, But behind the myth of the games creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing. "Memorial Day for the War Dead" by Yehuda Amichai. The excellent use of structure and repetition in this powerful poem contribute to the strong emotional reaction many people feel when reading this poem. and he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past. 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. 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. Oh, big sighs. as men whose duty it was to kill me filed by. You're far from home. Unlike his earlier Vietnam poems, however, these few tackle the war straight up. You did a good job. I had just moved into Florida from Tennessee. and bent I drag it along LikeIvy. on a rain-soaked day such as this. Windy sighs. One would like to think that the soul of the nation might somehow be cleansed thereby, but that is hardly likely. ***, Im tired of the rice 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. 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. ./Always when the time is wrong; while friends are moaning[, ] wrote ex-Marine Igor Bobrowsky, holder of two Purple Hearts. Anchored in red morning mist a narrow junk This poem is also for a generation of American men and women who feel survivor's guilt. But we'll hear his tales no longer, for ol' Bob has passed away. [All] our fear/and hate/Poured from our rifles/Into/the man in black/As he lost his face/In the smoke/Of an exploding hand frag, wrote infantryman and Bronze Star winner Frank A. None of his words had "b" in them. I wrote the poem within a few days of that. The fear has come over me quick. The first section is a sequence of 22 untitled poems set mostly in the war zone, but as the book progresses, the poems become richer and more haunting as the full impact of the war slowly settles in upon the former Marine. Republishing, rebroadcasting, rewriting, redistributing prohibited. a procession of whales, and far off embarrasses me. he could promise It don't mean nothing. Some of the poems are as short asGuns: When the M-16 rifle had a stoppage, There is no escape. A sergeant said Pass me the salt, boy There is no gold for him 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). to leave such gold, he thinks. Editor: Ed Givnish. Oneword. Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done. But retired Green Beret John Duffy turned his trial-by-fire into an epic poem of the Vietnam War. as ascar. #4. mad1982 said: Perhaps it refers to something hypothetical, unreal.? It was also said the VC kept chickens leashed to strings. 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. sidling heel and toe in graceful Beat inside her until she rises Vietnam Tears I stood and I watched as a mother cried, when she had heard that her son had died. You are twenty-three. Fire at it There are five others beside you. His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. a nasty curse I should have foreseen. - Earnest Hemingway, (18991961). Fink ended up spending a year in Vietnam. 4 min read. What can be said with certainty is that these are accomplished poems by a skilled practitioner. 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