Poetry of Witness| Vietnam War Veteran-Poets (Challenging American Myth)
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University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 1994 Poetry of witness| Vietnam War veteran-poets (challenging American myth) James Soular The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Soular, James, "Poetry of witness| Vietnam War veteran-poets (challenging American myth)" (1994). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 3240. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/3240 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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POETRY OF WITNESS: VIETNAM WAR VETERAN-POETS (CHALLENGING AMERICAN MYTH) by James Soular B.A., St. Cloud State University, 1973 M.F.A., University of Montana, 1992 Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Montana 1994 Approved by Chairman, BoardV)f Examiners Deart; Graduate School A, / ' f f V Date UMI Number: EP35490 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL U SE R S The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT UMI EP35490 Published by ProQuest LLC (2012). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code P m O i imcf ProQ uest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Soular, James Fred, M.A. May 1994 English Poetry o f Witness: Vietnam War Veteran-Poets (Challenging American Myth) Director: Christopher J Beach Two decades after the fall of Saigon and the official end of the Vietnam War, many Americans who fought in it are still engaged in a process of sense-making, an attempt to define the meaning of the "Vietnam Experience." Many veterans have chosen the medium of poetry to record the traumatic events they experienced and what they learned from them. Poetry arising out of traumatic experience or exposure to extremity has been defined by Carolyn Forché as "poetry of witness" (very similar to Kali Tal's "literature of trauma"). Poetry of witness embodies three elements: the experience of trauma or extremity, the urge to bear witness to that experience, and a sense of community, within which and to which one can witness. Although often intensely personal, poetry of witness usually arises out of reaction to some form of political or "state" action or pressure. Poetry of witness is not a call to bear arms against the state; rather, it is a documentation of experience and an exhortation against forgetfulness. It does not appeal to immediate political rectification so much as it appeals to a sense of communal conscience or spirit. Poetry of witness by veteran-poets is their effort to ensure that what really happened in Vietnam is made known and is not forgotten, and in that process, they challenge long-held American perceptions and myths pertaining to war. The works studied here include those by the earliest veteran-poets, represented by the 1972 anthology Winning Hearts and Minds, and later poetry represented by three veteran-poets who are today recognized as leading Vietnam War poets: W.D. Ehrhart, Bruce Weigl, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Collectively, these poets present a powerful collage of the fragmented nature of the Vietnam War and its many unspoken, forgotten, or ignored realities: the racism and atrocities, the needless and brutal deaths, the widespread destruction of the land, and the tremendous guilt and grief America's sons brought back with them from that war. Veteran-poets' poetry of witness is an outcome of their refusal to forget what happened and their need tu leuiind us that it did. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................... ii Chapter I. VETERAN-POETS AND THE POETRY OF WITNESS ................................. 1 II. POETRY AT GUT-LEVEL..........................................................................18 III. SONGS OF NAPALM; EHRHART, WEIGL, AND KOMUNYAKAA..............................................................................................40 IV. CONCLUSION: ILLUMINATION ROUNDS........................................................ 94 WORKS CITED.......................................................................................................................99 CHAPTER I VETERAN-POETS AND THE POETRY OF WITNESS During the terrible years o f the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, o f course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out o f the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there): "Can you describe this? " And I said: "I can. " Then something like a smile passedfeelingly over what had once been her Anna Akhmatova, Requiem Almost twenty years have thudded by since the images were flashed to the world; The American official punching the face of a panic-stricken Vietnamese attempting to board one of the last aircraft out of Da Nang, the helicopters perched on the rooftop of the U.S. embassy annex in Saigon as people climbed ladders to hoard the last evacuation flights euphemistically called "retrograde movements," and Vietnamese pilots desperately ditching their helicopters in the South China Sea near American ships lying offshore of South Vietnam. The Vietnam War officially ended 30 April 1975 when a North Vietnamese Army tank crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon. As those gates clattered to the ground and the existence of South Vietnam dissipated as quickly as the 1 2 tank's diesel fumes did in the celebratory air, so too did that image symbolically end a conflict that had divided the United States more than any event since the Civil War. For many American veterans, however, it was only a symbolic ending. The war continues to play itself out upon the battered landscape of their minds, and it is upon this battlefield where the war's final resolution must take place. This struggle to come to terms with the war surfaces in the poetry of many veterans, in what Carolyn Forché calls "poetry of witness," which arises out of "the impress of extremity upon the poetic imagination" (Forché 1993, 9). In the process of witnessing their experiences, these poets call into question many of the myths and perceptions of war that American society preserves and defends. Poetry of witness is a record, documentation, that an event, usually dramatic or traumatic, has occurred. In fact, poetry of witness may be the sole evidence or trace of that event; its objectivity, its "truth," cannot usually be verified through independent means. These poems are as much experiential as imaginative; the authors cannot be separated from the events described. Because poetry of witness arises out of personal experience, does it belong in the realm of the "personal" (lyric) or of the "public" (political)? Although witness poetry often arises out of reaction to some political or "state" action or pressure, it doesn't necessarily follow that all poetry of witness is strictly political. Likewise, though a poem of witness usually has its birth in personal trauma, that doesn't relegate all witness poetry to the realm of the personal. To distinguish poetry of witness from either political or personal poetry, Forché 3 defines for it a space between the two that she calls "the social" (Forché 1993, 9). "[T]he social is a place of resistance and struggle," she writes, "where books are published, poems read, and protest disseminated. It is the sphere in which claims against the political order are made in the name of justice" (Forché 1993, 9). Poetry of witness is not, however, a call to arms against the state; rather, it is a documentation of experience and an exhortation against forgetfulness. It does not appeal to immediate political rectification so much as it appeals to a sense of communal conscience or spirit. "Look!" poetry of witness seems to say. "This is what happened. This is what can happen again. What are we going to do about it?" Most poetry by Vietnam War veterans falls into this "social space." Poetry of witness is very similar to what Kali Tal describes as the "literature of trauma," and, like Forché, she sees in it three common elements; "the experience of trauma, the urge to bear witness, and a sense of community" (Tal 1991, 217-18). Survivors of a terrible and at times ruthless conflagration, the veteran-poets to be studied here have found it necessary to testify to what is often euphemistically called the "Vietnam Experience." Tal sees in the literature of Vietnam veterans a connection to literature by other trauma survivors, including Holocaust literature, A-bomb literature, and rape or incest literature (Tal 1991, 217). The urge to bear witness is a common characteristic of survivors of trauma. Usually occurring a decade or more after the experience, a process of re-visioning of the event begins to take shape in the survivor's mind.