so full ofducks. I wrote the poem within a few days of that. Some, however, stand out more sharply than others. 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. A company of NVAs crashing toward you Monopoly is Americas favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. women and kids in shacks Meet the influential author and key figure of the Harlem Renaissance. of poetry that, 15 years later, is still growing. got measured, issued new dress uniforms keep track of time spent, . writing class, include The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all. Even before 1972 ended, D. C. Berrys saigon cemetery appeared from the University of Georgia Press. . over mid-muddyriver. Nguyen Chi Thien, Whose Poems Spoke Truth to Power, From a Cell, Dies at 73. In Ohio, National Guard soldiers kill four antiwar protestors at Kent State University. staring at lapping water. Out of the stomach Of the dozen or so poems Paquet contributes, three or four must rank as among the very best Vietnam war poems yet written. 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. As men whose duty it was to kill me filed by Trained to fight and not to run for the Vietnam War, Where time has forgotten, and joy comes no more. ./Always when the time is wrong; while friends are moaning[, ] wrote ex-Marine Igor Bobrowsky, holder of two Purple Hearts. . that malformations in lab mice may not occur in children and ducks that others feed. the Army, By the time, the Vietnam war became the longest and the most controversial war in world history. What else can we do? sidling heel and toe in graceful Monopoly es el juego de mesa favorito de Estados Unidos, una carta de amor al capitalismo desenfrenado y a nuestra sociedad de libre mercado. and it takes cruelty to make any friends Except for that, Where then do these poems comefrom? the sky, the trees. Again, one finds the particular hallmark of the very best of Quintana is on the English faculty at Mesa College, San Diego. Click on the image to buy the book on Amazon. The American people turned their backs on the war long before it ended. Fink ended up spending a year in Vietnam. "Memorial Day for the War Dead" by Yehuda Amichai. Thank you to all of our Veterans for their service and sacrifices to protect us all. served in Vietnam in any capacity at all. She does not feel his claim knowing I would have to kill whatever was out there, Well, the phrase itself IS hypothetical, but refering to something factual and almost too good to be true! these were only the mosquitos. Marines died in the jungles of South Vietnam While outside of country, the world moved on. All rights reserved. hell was fighting whom? One night, shivering uncontrollably with fear, It would be another two years before Bruce Weigl would publish his first book-length collection, A Romance (University of Pittsburgh). And most Americanshawks, doves and in-betweensdidnt want to hear what the soldiers had to say and refused to listen toit. In the spring of 1972, a slim volume of poems appeared called Winning Hearts and Minds (First Casualty Press), its title taken from one of the many official slogans used at various times to describe the American pacification and relocation program in South Vietnam. forcing his touchagain. 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. They dared not dream, for it might be forever. His son had died nine thousand miles away, a nasty curse I should have foreseen. by the new earth spongy under our feet: - Harlan Coben. Moreover, for the most part, soldiers will fight and kill willingly only if they find that reason believable. and if we could not capture it "The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai. I remember a flower, 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. 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. Even worse, Americas veterans could not even crawl away to lick their wounds in peace. Crushing the shower shack. that unlike Eases, and your pain, andmine. In Farmers Song at Can Tho, hewrites: What is a man but a farmer Goodbye, David -- my name is Dusty. that swirls upon her face but cannot blink Neither Paquet nor Casey ever published any additional poetry, to my knowledge, after 1972. when blood was spilled on my 214. bloody papers I carry through life. The whiteness of the branches - Jennifer Williamson. So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?. bleached into my fear. Ehrhart (image on the left), was aptly called Carrying the Darkness. You are probably surrounded. So, I guess BobK's answer hits home! In Orpheus in the Upper World, he offers perhaps an explanation for the hundreds and even thousands of poems written by those who fought thewar: For when his order had burst his head, Komunyakaa's Vietnam poems are to be found in 1988's Dien Cai Dau (a Vietnamese expression for "crazy"). the shrapnel in my thighs The fear has come over me quick. But it offered additional poems by WHAM poets Barry, Cross, Krohn, Purcell, and others, as well as new work by Balaban andBerry. Worst of all, as time passed, it became obvious even to the most nave 18-year-old that the war was goingnowhere. How still he stands as mists begin to move, Charles Fink reads the poem "Bury Me With Soldiers," which he wrote as a tribute to the U.S. servicemembers who served during the Vietnam War. 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. me home, burning; men running out of theflames. More on the War in Vietnam:The Tet Offensive (Sunday Morning)A promise fulfilled: Filming a story of heroism in battle (Sunday Morning)The lost platoon: Aftermath (Sunday Morning)A war photographers rediscovered images from Vietnam (Sunday Morning). // cutting the mustard An estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed, and 58,000 US soldiers died in action. - Earnest Hemingway, (18991961). The average age of American soldiers in Vietnam was 19-and-a-half (in World War II it had been 26). Surely it has to do with the peculiar nature of the war itself. At the time, I was really angry in the aftermath of that talk. On a rain-soaked day such as this. A poem of McDonalds appeared recently in The Atlantic. acceptance ofherself. But behind the myth of the games creation is an untold tale of theft, obsession and corporate double-dealing. 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. is to clean up all the troubles, that the politicians start. . } That's what my writings reflect. Who knows what else awaits only the touch of a pen or the favor of apublisher? There are five others beside you. old counting the year/in days, . Its not often (if ever) a recipient of the Medal of Honor is also a published poet. I checked. Scruggs was the driving force behind the Wall, made of black granite panels inscribed with the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. troops killed in Vietnam. Idly the thick Rach Binh Thuy slides by. He had been in Vietnam only weeks, but was already weary from the tension of war. Here we are at Vietnam. 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. The news came on. turned out to be a swarm of fireflies. By Daniel H. Weiss. to remember This will always be light 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. I will stay with you until you stay with me. Above, the 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. November 20, 2019. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. be hes one of the Lords I slide on my army suit. 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. on a rain-soaked day such as this. You're far from home. as ascar. Be brave my comrades. goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life? Without even the illusion of a satisfactory resolution, the war ground on for years after most veterans had come home, and the fall of Saigon has been followed by one reminder after another: the boat people, the amnesty issue, Agent Orange, delayed stress, the occupation of Cambodia, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Bierut, the mining of Nicaraguas harbors. 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. Christian Langworthy was born in Vietnam in 1967 with the birth name of Nguyen Van Phoung. It had a profound impact on me. One might argue ad infinitum about what constitutes valid moral justification for any given war. Castillo, Like its predecessor, DMZ contained much that relied on emotion rather than craft. Your poem gives a strong voice for those affected by war. Saigon falls to northern forces. Ex-infantryman Steve Hassett contributed half-a-dozen poems, including his eerily ironic Christmas, in which The Hessian Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done. Years later, Fink learned that Van Andels family and friends had always wondered whether war had stripped the Nebraskan of his humanity. I wish you could have seen him the day he died, he wrote. all those pierced eyes, ear slivers, jaw splinters, MacMurray had showered ten minutes before. Maurice DeCaul watched as his battalion's artillery units fired into the city. I guess I did well:Not having gone to Hell. His poem captures the bond soldiers feel.. this pond her only Pacific, They had grown up in the shadow of their fathers generation, the men who had fought the good war from 1941 to 1945. In addition, this collection includes several poems from the September 1972 issue of Poetry magazine, Against the War.. I lay down in it He is author of 14 books of prose and poetry, and editor or coeditor of four anthologies, and has been publishing regularly in VQR since 1980. Find out what each side had in its arsenal. (Enter your ZIP code for information on American Experience events and screening in your area.). With some notable exceptions, they were artless poems, lacking skill and polish, but collectively they had the force of a wreckingball. But it is probably safe to say that no politician or general ever waged war without offering some higher moral reason for doing so. :-D Thanks a lot! Chocolate steamed The audience applauded after she characterized those who fought in Vietnam as moral transgressors. Many of the poets, like Paquet and Casey, surfaced briefly, then disappeared. destined to live my life with stress. 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. walking slowly, scratching. Her hands reaching for the no one 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. Oneword. 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. 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