that my poems should deal with other things[. ] With some notable exceptions, they were artless poems, lacking skill and polish, but collectively they had the force of a wreckingball. document.documentElement.className += 'js'; 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. what release? Here are poems ranging from the American West to the The dissident poet Nguyen Chi Thien in 2008 in California. Quintana is on the English faculty at Mesa College, San Diego. 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. ] Former Airman Horace Coleman writes of his Saigon daughter in A Black SoldierRemembers: She does not offer me one of the The type of day that dogs don't understand. Who waits in waves of heat before her. Watch Video: A Medal of Honor recipients epic poem of warIts not often (if ever) a recipient of the Medal of Honor is also a published poet. Target him! so full ofducks. her eyes Ex-infantryman Steve Hassett contributed half-a-dozen poems, including his eerily ironic Christmas, in which The Hessian It had a profound impact on me. 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. Progress was measured in grisly official body counts, and any dead Vietnamese was a Viet Cong. And thats the essence of war.. to the microphone Vuong's new collection of poetry was inspired by his mother's death from breast cancer. Be brave my comrades. a rifle, and Anchored in red morning mist a narrow junk to leave such gold, he thinks. 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. 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. 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. like sillowy seeds of milkweed pod, what do they know back where Bowing then to the river. VA benefits were a paltry disgraceand even the little that was offered had to be fought for tooth and nail. Editor: Ed Givnish. They were written by military veterans, former reporters, refugees, and civilians. long since fled or buried I slide on my army suit. that although our garden seeps with sewage, and our elders think its up for auctionswear The poems are copyrighted, but can be used for any nonprofit reason with credits. over mid-muddyriver. I was so outraged that so many were nodding in approval, Fink said. | Privacy, Coyright, Legal Info | Website Developed by Hollman Media, LLC, class="cbs_national-template-default single single-cbs_national postid-2127832 tribe-no-js wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-6.10.0 vc_responsive". Click on the image to buy the book on Amazon. W. D. Ehrhart, a former Marine sergeant and veteran of the Vietnam War, holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Wales, where he did his dissertation on American poetry of the Korean War. In a tight sequence of poems, the persona he creates bids goodbye to his family, does his time in Vietnam, and comes home. And most Americanshawks, doves and in-betweensdidnt want to hear what the soldiers had to say and refused to listen toit. You are probably surrounded. The Medal of Honors and In Vietnam I prayed fervently They were fighting for what they believed in. 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. is the jungle But the appearance in 1984 of D.F. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. 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. South Vietnamese government falls. Chocolate steamed Windy sighs. An event that stunned the nation and forced an examination of U.S. military training and tactics. the rest, all "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. That represent all Many of the poets, like Paquet and Casey, surfaced briefly, then disappeared. I am the last person you will see. a way to throw off thedead. All of them deal with Vietnam and its aftermath. for the number you'd last after bitten. 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. and he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past. Never in anything have I found But it offered additional poems by WHAM poets Barry, Cross, Krohn, Purcell, and others, as well as new work by Balaban andBerry. The penis in the air Only now I cant fly. hang around as a big dark cloud. 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. After our war, the dismembered bits Nothing more can be done, except to save them. Shivering uncontrollably in the mud Why?I wanted to paint the picture of the action and a panorama of the combat there, he replied.Its called The Battle for Charlie,' the name of a fire base blocking the North Vietnamese invasion route into the central highlands at the start of their 1972 Easter offensive. So, I guess BobK's answer hits home! Copyright 2023 The Virginia Quarterly Review. and it takes cruelty to make any friends was ourvillage. All rights reserved. The contrast is even more remarkable when one considers how very few members of the Vietnam Generation ever actually We were given orders to fight to the death, Duffy replied. Editor: Ed Givnish. Pasture unfolding before us can denyit. Waiting for the enemy, faces without names; Their bodies mount-up now God's to claim. You have been followed. The shortest poem in the book is LEclatante Victoire de KheSanh: The main thing They were fighting for what they believed in. But behind the myth of the games creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing. It died that unlike Oneword. What else can we do? I am of the same generation as Harris, the courageous draft resister and anti-war campaigner who died on February 6. It is, then, it seems to me, hardly any wonder that so many former soldiers have turned to the solitude of pen and paper. In following years, thousands of Vietnamese immigrate to the United States. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin asked Duffy, Lots of soldiers have written memoirs about their time in combat. - Jim Valvano. Seven winters have slipped away, old counting the year/in days, . 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. That's what my writings reflect. The Line Between Innocence and Immorality. Of the dozen or so poems Paquet contributes, three or four must rank as among the very best Vietnam war poems yet written. by this dazzle that does not wish to leave us To a Sacred Place That We All Know Deep In the Shrines of Our Soul: In Our Hearts, In Our Prayers In Our Minds For All Time. A plane that was to take who won for us the freedom, that our Country now enjoys. Poem for Our Dog Afraid of Thunder on a Rainy Day. With the passage of time, Caseys poems seem less substantial than former medic Paquets, but back then they were deemed good enough to earn him the Yale Younger Poets Award, and his collection Obscenities appeared almost simultaneously with Winning Hearts andMinds. 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. his cooplike, concrete sentry perched mid-bridge a kite, a mannikin playing the guitar, Running from her village, napalm 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.. women and kids in shacks March in Washington against the Vietnam War, Code Poem: From the International Code of Signals for the Use of All Nations, At the Justice Department November 15, 1969, America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity, Lines Written on the Occasion of President Nixon's Address to the Nation, May 8, 1972, Assemblage of Ruined Plane Parts, Vietnam Military Museum, Hanoi, Vietnamese-American poet contemplates his personal ties to the war, California Lecture: from Poetry and Politics, Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the Vietnam War. may she never 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. No one couldve expected more from them. 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.. the sad smile she alreadyhas. On a rain-soaked day such as this You chose to write poetry. By Margalit Fox. #4. mad1982 said: Perhaps it refers to something hypothetical, unreal.? In Farmers Song at Can Tho, hewrites: What is a man but a farmer A people they had thought they were going to liberate treated them with apparent indifference or outright hostility. Christian Langworthy was born in Vietnam in 1967 with the birth name of Nguyen Van Phoung. He won't be mourned by many, just his children and his wife. Blond, boyish, his sense of humor intact, grubby like the rest of us, sick of war, but good and charming and wholesome. There is no gold for him Most of my anthologies, and the three textbooks I use for my creative Today, the poem is read at the funerals of . All rights reserved. Even then, When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking, And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying. I do this under the biggest tree, 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. In late March 2003, while standing outside Nasiriyah, Iraq, former Marine Sgt. Outside, the buses waiting Again, one finds the particular hallmark of the very best of the Units of our Conflict -- all Conflicts. Public obscenity likethis[.]. Im sailing to Bien Hoa to surgery in Saigon, I wondered, what had they drunk In a recording, Duffy (call sign: Dusty Cyanide) talks to the aircraft coming to his rescue. Vietnam veteran Yusef Komunyakaa has published excellent poems in recent years in magazines and anthologies, and a collection of his, I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. 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