This was neither the model nor the legacy of the Vietnam War for the soldier poets who fought it: their war caught them wrong-footed, ethically, militarily, historically and geo-politically. This pervasive sense of mutilation echoes in Vietnamese poems. His job, to gather his comrades body parts into something like a whole to bury them. But at least theres water and light And twice a day they open the bars and let the air in. If what is to be done cannot be effected, then society falls apart.. Any reader not knowing an Asian language is familiar with the bewilderment caused by most transpositions of Asian classics into English, in which usually the better the resulting English poem the greater its distance from its language, culture, and customs. 2015. In the middle of a shooting war, where his tape recorder occasionally picked up mortar fire, Balaban recorded about 35 singers and about 500 ca dao. Your email address will not be published. Anderson, Doug, Horse Medicine (2015), Barrow Street Press: New York; Keep Your Head Down(2009), Norton: New York/London; The Moon Reflected Fire (1994), Alice James Books: Farmington, ME, Appy, Christian B., Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (1993), North Carolina University Press: Chapel Hill, Atkinson, The Long Gray Line (1989), Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA, Balaban, John, The Invisible Powers, David L. Jannetta Distinguished Lectureship in War, Literature and the Arts, U.S. Air Force Academy, 13 October 2009; Spring Essence: The Poetry of H Xun Huong, Copper Canyon Press, 2000: Port Townsend, WA; Remembering Heavens Face, The University of Georgia Press, 1991: Athens, GA; After Our War, 1974, Bowen, Kevin, Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong, Curbstone Press: 1994, Willimantic, CT; 6 Vietnamese Poets, edited by Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen, Curbstone Press in cooperation with William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequence: Willimantic, CT, Ehrhart, W.D., Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems (1999), Adastra Press: Easthampton, MA;Going Back: An Ex-Marine Returns to Vietnam (1987), McFarland: Jefferson, NC; Carrying the Darkness/ American Indo-China: The Poetry of the Vietnam War (1985), Avon Press: NY, From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (1998), ed. Vietnamese singers of ca dao, recorded by John Balaban in 1971. Light stretches out its hand filled with light Perhaps we would meet again. In all the senseless acts of racist hate, I felt the growing fears. Its practically impossible to tell civilians from the Viet Cong. The Vietnamese in which some of the poems are preserved draws from Nm, an ideographic script so ancient that only a few dozen scholars are currently capable of reading it. Who could have fashioned this marvel? Nor protect the children displaced by war, even in the shelter of their American homes. A thousand-weight strong, he cannot be swayed. Among his many accolades, he is the recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly / Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, the 2017 T.S. His work as appeared in Boston Review, Vietnam Forum, New Asia Review, Compost, Nation, Manoa, and other journals. Vietnam War poetry speaks for itself, often in brutal, explicit language. Draft deferment for college students allowed most middle and upper class youngsters to opt out of military service. With a heavy paw he guards the frontier, Viet Cong forces begin prolonged attack on US bases, such as Khe Sanh. [] There is a distinguished body of writings by American veterans detailing the boredom and horror of combat as well as post-war traumas within a country that shunned the returning veterans. Below the hill, woodcutters bend under their loads, Since all things naturally return to their source, these snags and tatters arrived, with immigrant uncertainty, in the United States. In Guerrilla War, W.D. This time the Perfume River. Come here, son, lets see if they castrated you. It was almost home. The bathing girl does not see us till weve stopped and gaped like fools. Anyone can submit comments, poems, readings and relevant photographs to the site. Your email address will not be published. And myself? Ehrhart, Doug Anderson, Kevin Bowen, and Yusef Komunyakaaall write of meeting their Vietnamese counterparts with a heightened awareness of the historically blood-drenched, festering betrayals and quixotic loyalties existing within all parties. The girl grew up to become a woman Among his many accolades, he is the recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly / Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, the 2017 T.S. There are no catcalls, whoops, none of the things that soldiers do; the most stupid of us is silent, rapt. I have read a few in my time, but some of these are new to me! Ehrhart feared seems genuinely deflected when he returns to Vietnam in 2011, and finds all about him an astonishing and bewildering prosperity. Draft calls end. The children are playing badminton again. / Red tiles brighten many houses. Elsewhere, wartime detail sparks into being: trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail driven without windscreens; Xuan Moi writing his poem before battle, Third watch, cock-crow, everyone asleep. Many poems are written to and for fellow soldiers, recording their loss. Light acquires a portion But the two most noteworthy poets in the collection are Paquet and Michael Casey. Seeing the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary film recently, I wondered afterwards about the poetic voice of the Vietnamese people. Youre dead as King today in Memphis. In 1998, Phillip Mahony, a New York City detective, edited an anthology entitled From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath. Organizing Tool Kit for 50 years of GI Resistance Campaign, Resources about Vietnam War Resisters in Canada, I Aint Marching Anymore: A Conversation on the History of Dissent, Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute on the Future of Veterans Healthcare. There is blood still under my fingernails from the last man who died in my arms. They ran out of beer at the EM club. let him complete the circle And girls. After being met with years of protest, demonstrations, and activism, including the objections of many notable poets and artists, such as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, and W.S. In World War II, most Americans knew personally or were related to someone in uniform. Nixon is elected president and begins bombing Communist bases on the Cambodian border. In addition to these bitter poems, John Balaban turned to translation. Now thats a beautiful romance worth celebrating for the Lunar New Year. A boat crosses to the Buddha Lands. Yet Doug Anderson, sitting in Hue in 2009, listens to Lam Thi My Da, poet and former combat engineer, sing her sweet and mournful elegy, Bomb Crater Sky. Anderson writes: She stands and makes her body small, like a girls, and sings in a small voice. Anderson explains that her poem remembers the young girls in the mountain villages who were ordered to run out into the fields at night with flashlights to attract the bombers, so that infantry and supplies could move down the mountain paths. Does another difference lie in the Vietnamese culture of We, versus the American culture of I, which played out in contrasting ideals of patriotic sacrifice? Nguyen Quang Than was a successful and well-known journalist, writer, and poet who lived until he was 82. What I witnessed and participated in was the random destruction of livestock, civilian homes and sometimes whole hamlets, the detention and often brutal interrogation of civilians, and the routine killing of unarmed men, women and children by the American military and its Saigon ally. Soul Brothers, what you dying for?, In his joint affirmation of civil rights and anti-war activism, Martin Luther King wrote in the New York Times on 26th February 1967: We are willing to make the Negro 100 percent of a citizen in warfare, but reduce him to 50 percent of a citizen on American soil. While the casualties of black soldiers were disproportionately high in the late 60s, they began levelling off. That is his way of showing compassion: by trying to understand both sides. When Bruce Weigl, like W.D. As soldiers were trapped in its complexities, whether or not they believed in the goals of the war, in the field, they believed in survival and revenge. Who can describe this desolate scene: The long white river sliding through The emerald shadows of the ancient canopy. Ehrhart, the rebel son of a minister who had enlisted in the Marines in 1966, explains about the war into which he plunged as an eighteen year-old: Its practically impossible to tell civilians from the Viet Cong. 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