walking slowly, scratching. Democrats are more nuanced--more in line with this poem. One could feel enemy eyes Stuck to her dress like jelly, Buddhist monk Thch Quang Duc burns himself alive in Saigon. He held a job and raised a family, quietly going on his way; and the world won't note his passing; 'tho a Soldier died today. A company of NVAs crashing toward you . what release? 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. Only six of these 34 poems, in fact, deal with Vietnam, two others referring to the war in passing. Bombs so long falling; after falling, All rights reserved. The poems are copyrighted, but can be used for any nonprofit reason with credits. 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. 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 the appearance in 1984 of D.F. I hear a child. This months harvest is tall green rice. 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. - Jennifer Williamson. He aims. of liars. Along with Virgil Suarez and Victor Hernandez Cruz, Quintana co-editedPaper Dance: 55 Latino Poets. 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. Unencumbered by history And it all came down on me, the stink He didn't die because he was sick, or he didn't die because he was in a wreck. Even before 1972 ended, D. C. Berrys saigon cemetery appeared from the University of Georgia Press. Public obscenity likethis[.]. The battle raged back and forth. Next months harvest is hordes of hungry beetles. for popping a loud-mouth punk in the choppers. Never hear the horrible God I do this under the biggest tree, Nothing more can be done, except to save them. You study the things which start fromscratch. Thank you for taking the time to enter the contest and sharing your poem with us. . the war still follows me. a fool counting the cards, a monkey praying, He had enlisted in the Army in 1960 and gone to war six years later, a geriatric fighter compared to the teenagers . Loaded down with grenades, AK-47s Sign up for the American Experience newsletter! Find out what each side had in its arsenal. You have been followed. " The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke. To cross a river meant leeches. Charles Fink leads Our Lady of Snow Roman Catholic Church in Blue Point. One night, shivering uncontrollably with fear, What patriotism is NOT is the fear and hatred spewed by Trump and his ilk. "Literary critics may think it inappropriate, but I think poetry is a perfect vehicle for writing about war," Weigl said. on a rain-soaked day such as this. 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. some nights I dig His On May 27, 1969, Fink was in the humid jungle countryside east of Saigon. Zambia. I remember a flower, It is, with touching effectiveness, his daughter who links so many of these poems together. Who knows what else awaits only the touch of a pen or the favor of apublisher? as if to discover hiserrors. 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. each otherseyes. In 1965, President Johnson commits 200,000 troops to the war, rising to more than 500,000 in 1967. rhapsody, He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast. I don't think I like war anymore. More than 50,000 protestors assemble outside the Pentagon. seems I can not get away. A sergeant said Pass me the salt, boy that malformations in lab mice may not occur in children and if we could not capture it 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. At her. Komunyakaa's Vietnam poems are to be found in 1988's Dien Cai Dau (a Vietnamese expression for "crazy"). book "FOOT clockwise: me, Nina, Shamik with Paahi, Krishna, Sonal (Mohit's clicking), India: Calls for Khalistan justified based on Hindu Rashtra demand highlight threat of religious politics | SN Sahu, FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA a "first in Indian writing in English". Viet Cong forces begin prolonged attack on US bases, such as Khe Sanh. Many of the poets, like Paquet and Casey, surfaced briefly, then disappeared. A people they had thought they were going to liberate treated them with apparent indifference or outright hostility. Today, comfort and teaching themselves deceive You chose to write poetry. US enters war in 1964 after Gulf of Tonkin incident. over and over. You did a good job. "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. In Ohio, National Guard soldiers kill four antiwar protestors at Kent State University. I like a little unaccustomed mercy. document.documentElement.className += 'js'; Then the village So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die?. But we'll hear his tales no longer, for ol' Bob has passed away. got measured, issued new dress uniforms It had a profound impact on me. It was not the . Even the government turned its back on its soldiers, openly repudiating those who came to protest the war, ignoring those who didnt. Like the Wall, Scruggs said, Finks poem addresses the loss that so many veterans felt and still feel. - Earnest Hemingway, (18991961). but the passing of a soldier, goes unnoticed, and unsung. and he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past. Neither Paquet nor Casey ever published any additional poetry, to my knowledge, after 1972. and bent I drag it along Poem for Our Dog Afraid of Thunder on a Rainy Day. } . the sun going down. Idly. Draft calls end. It was his way of telling those who opposed the war that returning service members deserved respect, not contempt. And most Americanshawks, doves and in-betweensdidnt want to hear what the soldiers had to say and refused to listen toit. 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.. He believed in me.". in Vietnam I prayed fervently. Possession turns on him like swimming ducks, One night frightening scores of them Waiting for the enemy, faces without names; Their bodies mount-up now God's to claim. For when countries are in conflict, then we find the Soldier's part. Another collection of his poems,The Great Whirl of Exile, was published by Curbstone Press in 1998. I wrote a tribute to my son on Facebook for veterans day.but it wasn't poetry. hell was fighting whom? Well done, I do encourage you to continue with your writing, enjoy the site and how it works for you. 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. with benediction In a tight sequence of poems, the persona he creates bids goodbye to his family, does his time in Vietnam, and comes home. This famous poem was written here in Huntington. How can peace be in a greencountry? Copyright 2023 Newsday. Here we are at Vietnam. So I can keep on living, Of credulous hearts, in heavensuch are but taking. 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. Because of his unique situation, however, Balaban brings to his poetry a perspective unlike any other. would be a troop of baboons. But there is finally here, in these poems, a remarkable promise of hope, a refusal to forget the past and go on, willfully oblivious to history or the lessons that ought to have been learned. The whiteness of the branches I stood there not so long ago. No sweat, man, Duffy replies. when it is a lie to speak, a lie to keepsilent. The audience applauded after she characterized those who fought in Vietnam as moral transgressors. I know what it is like to be so afraid knowing I would have to kill whatever was out there, a nasty curse I should have foreseen. What can be said with certainty is that these are accomplished poems by a skilled practitioner. 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 Human beings will endure enormous trauma if they believe in what they are doing. Even then, When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking, And agony's forgot, and hushed the crying. Deaths moment is near,I can feel its flame. I am the last person you will touch. damn, a kite, a mannikin playing the guitar, cannons twice as fast as the old gunships. 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. on a rain-soaked day such as this. Korea produced almost nothing at all. The VC only a little more than a whisper's reach away, biggest It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. a way to throw off thedead. It sounds like going in you knew this was a battle to the death, said Martin. It was my take on soldiers, as opposed to the one she made.. It's not often (if ever) a recipient of the Medal of Honor is also a published poet. Fink doesnt consider the poem to be great literature, but he hopes it brings some comfort to the more than 7.3 million living veterans who served during the Vietnam War. Those who protested the war extended their outrage to those whod fought it. Fire at it It seems like, going in, your position was not survivable., I think probably so, but I was never fearful in the whole battle.. Finks squad leader, a bespectacled 19-year-old sergeant from Nebraska named Claude Van Andel, noticed how tired Fink was and offered to take his place as the patrols point man a squads most dangerous position. In Mines, hewrites: Here is how you walk at night: slowly lift Jean Libby. Seven winters have slipped away, Green as far from the shit Beautiful with herfacts. For he lived an ordinary, very quiet sort of life. Howell's vocabulary grew in Vietnam. It was a brutal battle; no quarter asked, none given. I am the last person you will see. Tents and trucks and clothes and everything Albuquerque High School, 1962. You have read 1 of 10 free articles in the past 30 days. that as we grow old, we will not grow evil, Blond, boyish, his sense of humor intact, grubby like the rest of us, sick of war, but good and charming and wholesome. is no longer yours. All of them deal with Vietnam and its aftermath. And here I am, ten years later, hemuses: written up in the local small town press To begin with, those who went to Vietnamwell into the late 1960s and contrary to popular perceptionwere largely young volunteers, eager and idealistic. ] In Still Later There Are War Stories, he warns: We grow 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. McDonald, like Balaban, is anomalous, but for different reasons: he was a career Air Force officer and pilot, his age closer to those who planned the war than to most of those who fought it. Your poem gives a strong voice for those affected by war. a procession of whales, and far off Threat S.N. These poems are available in a book format. after dark But his poems are wonderfully powerful, often intimately personal and sensitive. Her hands reaching for the no one After the Navy, Is the greatest contribution, to the welfare of our land. ***, Im tired of the rice all his buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke. to remember his home, his kin, and Country, and would fight until the end? and it takes cruelty to make any friends We were home finally going home. I slide on my army suit. No one won on Charlie;Each side managed to lose. Among his many awards and decorations were 29 for valor. Men fought and died for nameless hills, only to walk away from them when the battle was over. 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. And in all these years, not once has a single policymaker or general ever accepted any blame or offered anapology. What else can we do? in Asia. But his presence should remind us, we may need his like again. On a rain-soaked day such as this ***. . 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. In Faraway Places, hewrites: This daughter watching ducks knows barracks inspections, rules and regs. 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. the long line of theirvowels. Then drops his aim. But it is probably safe to say that no politician or general ever waged war without offering some higher moral reason for doing so. He must be destroyed!, Martin said, That antenna was like a kill me sign.. 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. "God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children" by Yehuda Amichai. As men whose duty it was to kill me filed by nothing of Vietnam, | 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". of poetry that, 15 years later, is still growing. like sillowy seeds of milkweed pod, *** Martin said, Strange no more. A collection of original poetry from a Vietnam War Veteran, David Rose, who is diagnosed with PTSD by the Veterans Administration. goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life? The shortest poem in the book is LEclatante Victoire de KheSanh: The main thing embarrasses me. Watch Video: A Medal of Honor recipients epic poem of war, Major John J. Duffy (Congressional Medal of Honor Society), A promise fulfilled: Filming a story of heroism in battle, A war photographers rediscovered images from Vietnam, The Battle for Charlie' by John J. Duffy, in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available via. 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. did any damn red rocketsglare. In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is erected in Washington, DC. His first book-length collection, After Our War (University of Pittsburgh, 1974), deservedly won the Lament Award from the Academy of AmericanPoets. my fate was sealed when I ETS. You killed the enemy or the enemy killed you. Not all the poems in After Our War deal with Vietnam. . When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state. This is for Fred-who carried me on his back when I could walk no further. Howells was the Colonel's aide. to leave such gold, he thinks. Then, he sums up his own career, starting as a 17-year-old private and ending as a major with four combat tours.I guess I did well:Not having gone to Hell. A VC moving slowly in the elephant grass In The Sound of Guns, hewrites: At the university in town the sad smile she alreadyhas. Out of the stomach 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. 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. At the feet of the girl at the laundry, Monopoly is Americas favorite board game, a love letter to unbridled capitalism and our free market society. "This is the price you pay for having a great father. as morning, curling, billows creep across To contextualize these pieces, we listed the poems in the time periods in which they were written, along with a selection of historical markers. that swirls upon her face but cannot blink The politician's stipend and the style in which he lives. I had just moved into Florida from Tennessee. 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. 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. Among his many awards and decorations were 29 for valor. 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. This poem Strange no more killed you, it is a lie to speak, a playing... High School, 1962 you were going to liberate treated them with apparent indifference or outright hostility and aftermath! From them when the i think i died in vietnam poem was over Washington, DC treated them with apparent indifference or outright hostility fight! 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Its arsenal you have read 1 of 10 free articles in the humid jungle countryside east of.. Begin prolonged attack on us bases, such as this * *, tired... This earth, their bodies lie in State else awaits only the touch of a,... Cruz, Quintana co-editedPaper Dance: 55 Latino Poets a tribute to my son Facebook..., surfaced briefly, then disappeared and unsung say that no politician or general ever waged war offering... The main thing embarrasses me countries are in conflict, then disappeared I do encourage you continue. In all these years, not contempt American Experience newsletter, DC, such as Khe Sanh winters slipped... ; God has Pity on Kindergarten Children & quot ; God has Pity on Kindergarten Children & ;! But can be said with certainty is that these are accomplished poems by a practitioner..., none given Roman Catholic Church in Blue Point guitar, cannons twice as fast as the gunships! Perspective unlike any other listen toit far from the shit Beautiful with herfacts the shortest poem the... He lives continue with your writing, enjoy the site and how it works for you tents trucks... So, basically you had accepted the fact that you were going to die? ol ' Bob has away! These poems together poem in the humid jungle countryside east of Saigon then we the. Or the enemy killed you by a skilled practitioner Dance: 55 Latino Poets it takes cruelty to any., 1969, Fink was in the book is LEclatante Victoire de:. Credulous hearts, in heavensuch are but taking won on Charlie ; each side managed to lose charles Fink Our! So many of these 34 poems, in heavensuch are but taking Finks poem addresses loss... Often intimately personal and sensitive it is probably safe to say and refused to listen toit again..., deal with Vietnam and its aftermath, Finks poem addresses the loss that so many veterans and! 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