Vietnam War poetry, ‘The Discourse That Prevailed' (IV). What characterises the majority of the individual Vietnam War poems is their specificity. Presenting much more shattering detail than did World War I poets such as Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen, poets of the Vietnam War wrote about immediate wartime experiences: firefights, the death of a friend, smells of the jungle, rocket attacks, being wounded, seeing Vietnamese women and children killed, corpses in body bags, rape, arrival into and departure from Vietnam, street scenes, the beauty of the countryside, memories of the war after ending their tours, bombing missions, and letters from home. Brutally frank, much of the language of these poems represents the actuality of the discourse that prevailed, filled with the soldiers' jargon and profanity, often requiring the use of a glossary because of the many references to historical events as well as specific people and place names. The themes of the poems are both universal and particularly modern. Many show the horrors of war, the deaths of innocent civilians, the tragic ending of youthful lives, and the general sundering of moral and ethical values. Reflecting the consciousness of the 1960s and 1970s, however, a large number of poems mirror the feelings of all participants as America's longest war began to seem more and more unwinnable: the sense of loss of individuality, the feeling of guilt at having participated, the impossibility of anyone's understanding the totality of the experience, the realisation of having been betrayed by higher authority, and most often, the anger and bitterness at feeling like what fiction writer Larry Heinemann called not a cog in a mighty machine but merely “a slab of meat on the table”. There are also many poems that contain racial and ethnic themes, using both black versus white and white versus Asian conflicts. Of the hundreds of war veteran poets, a few achieved literary prominence. In 1994 Army veteran Yusef Komunyakka won the Pulitzer Prize for his Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1993). All of the selections in one of his earlier books, Dien Cai Dau (1988), are about the war and present not only richly metaphoric poems about Hà Nôi Hannah, Bob Hope, and night patrols but also offer the acute vision of a black soldier. Another major prize-winning poet is former Marine W. D. Ehrhart, whose numerous collections of poetry, four non-fiction books, and many edited anthologies made him one of the most prolific and widely known Vietnam War writers. In A Generation of Peace (1977), his poem A Relative Thing, which details the feelings of many returned veterans, reminds America that “We are your sons”, and that “When you awake, we will still be here.” The oldest of the major poets was Walter McDonald, who was a career officer teaching at the Air Force Academy when he was assigned to Vietnam in 1969. An editor as well as a fiction writer, McDonald was best known for his many volumes of poems such as ‘After the Noise of Saigon' (1988), in which the subject of war is balanced by poems about flying and scenes set in west Texas. Another professor was Bruce Weigl, whose 1967-1968 Army service in Vietnam sparked a number of collections such as ‘Song of Napalm' (1988), in which most of his war poems appear. The title poem is a haunting testament to his wife as he confesses his inability to forget aspects of the war. Also a college teacher, John Balaban spent three years in Vietnam, the first two as a conscientious objector. He published fiction and numerous translations of Vietnamese poetry, and his collections After Our War (1974), nominated for a National Book Award, and Blue Mountain (1982) contain memorable poems such as The Guard at the Binh Thuy Bridge and April 30, 1975, a poem written about the last day of the war. Among the other poets and their major books are Michael Casey, Obscenities (1972); David Huddle, Stopping by Home (1988); Kevin Bowen, Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong (1994); D.F. Brown, Returning Fire (1984); Horace Coleman, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, in Four Black Poets (1977); Gerald McCarthy, War Story (1977); Bill Shields, Nam Poems (1987); Steve Mason, Warrior for Peace, with an introduction by Oliver Stone (1988); Bryan Alec Floyd, The Long War Dead (1976); Perry Oldham, Vinh Long (1976); and D. C. Berry, Saigon Cemetery (1972). Individual works by most of these and other poets can be found in the following anthologies: Winning Hearts and Minds, edited by Larry Rottman, Jan Barry, and Basil T. Paquet (1972); Listen: The War, edited by Fred Kiley and Tony Dater (1973); Demilitarised Zones, edited by Jan Barry and W. D. Ehrhart (1976); Carrying the Darkness, edited by W. D. Ehrhart (1985,1989); Shallow Graves. Two Women in Vietnam, by Wendy Wilder Larsen and Trân Thi Nga (1986); and Unaccustomed Mercy, edited by W. D. Ehrhart, with an introduction and bibliography by John Clark Pratt (1989). Coincident with the dedication of The Wall, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, the first major gathering of and public readings by Vietnam War creative writers was held in New York City on March 23, 1984. There, W. D. Ehrhart defined what became apparent in most of the poetry that had been and was to be published. Although most veteran-poets did write about many other subjects, it was the war that consumed them in their art and inspired their best poems because, according to Ehrhart, that experience was ‘the single most important experience of [one's] life.' Accordingly, the poetry of the Vietnam War provides a historical, intellectual, and emotional chronology of men and women at war that is indeed unique. Dear Egyptian Mail readers, Your comments and/or contributions are welcome. We promise to publish whatever is deemed publishable at the end of each series of articles. [email protected]
