A War Poet

This is a paper I wrote for an in depth study in poetry dealing with conflict.  Our class specifically looked at the book by Carolyn Forche, Against Forgetting.  The poet I researched is Bruce Weigl who served in the Vietnam for three years, starting when he was a teenager.  The experiences he had in the war changed his life forever and give him a context for his poetry.

Bruce Weigl: The Impressions Vietnam Left Behind

            The Vietnam War was one of the most destructive wars in history and is resented in the American culture more than thirty years later.  It created a high level of distrust in the government and for the first time depicted the atrocities of war on television.  The violence that the Vietnamese and the American soldiers endured has left a permanent scar on the United States and those soldiers who fought in the war.  Bruce Weigl, the distinguished war poet, fought in the war for three years, starting when he was only nineteen.  His experiences in Vietnam and back in the States post-service led him to write his characteristic emotional and graphic poetry, some of which dealing directly with the images of Vietnam.  In an interview with David Keplinger, a poet himself and a student of Bruce, Weigl admits that “…it did not occur to me to write poems about the war for a long time.  It wasn’t exactly that it hadn’t occurred to me, but I wondered why anyone would want to read about the war because it was already terrible enough” (Keplinger 140).  After the war, Weigl attended Oberlin College and the University of New Hampshire, and received his Ph.D. at the University of Utah.  Bruce Weigl’s experiences in the war are vivid memories that seem to linger in the present.  The terror of Vietnam permeates all of Weigl’s work.

            In Weigl’s memoir Circle of Hanh, he explains, “The fate the world has given me is to struggle to write powerfully enough to draw others into the horror” (Weigl 6).  Horror is what drives his poetry, and the source is his dark memories of the war.  Early in Weigl’s career he sent a piece called “Mines” to James Wright who responded, “Out of the horror there rises a musical ache that is beautiful” (Keplinger 141-2).  This was an affirmation of Weigl’s gift to transcend dreadfulness in his poetry, which is exactly his intent.  The main strategy that Weigl uses relies on the sound of words, “words said straight,” to say something so bluntly that the poem portrays a tangible emotion that is not offensive to the reader.  Underneath all of his wrongness is a rightness Keplinger observes.  Weigl views the world objectively and so does his poetry.

             Still, not all of Bruce Weigl’s poetry specifically focuses on the violence and disturbing qualities of the Vietnam War.  There is the same sense of an upset balance of the natural world however.  This describes his poem “The Impossible” which tells a story of an afflicted adult mind shaped by the sexual molestation as a child.  The poem from his collection Archaeology of the Circle has graphic imagery and offensive language, but it still sticks to Weigl’s goal as a writer, proven by the last line, “Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what” (Weigl 135).  There is a similarity here that connects the war to the molestation.  The war left an irremovable stain from the soldier’s minds just as the pedophile left one on the seven year old child.  There is something to be said about carrying on after something like this happens in one’s life, and Weigl notes that in his last line as well.  The question asks “what can I do after something like that happens?”  Weigl answers, “It’s hard, but you must struggle with it upfront.” Another similarity reflects the feeling one has when coming back into society after the atrocity has taken place.  To the child molested, “a black wave/washed over my brain, changing me/so I could not move among my people in the old way” (Weigl 134).  To the surviving soldier, he was met with a disapproving US population and the terror of PTSD once back from the war. 

            Most of Bruce Weigl’s poetry relies on a story telling technique, furthering his straight forward style.  In his poem “Song of Napalm” from the self-titled collection, Weigl tells a story where he witnesses a rainstorm and is reminded of his time in Vietnam.  He finds similarities between branches and barbed wire, thunder and mortar, horse pasture and rice paddy.  He explains that he tries to put these images of war out of his mind, and he thinks he finally does.  All in the poem is not gruesome so far, but as he closes his eyes he still sees “the girl/running from her village, napalm/stuck to her dress like jelly,/her hands reaching for the no one/ who waits in waves of heat before her” (Weigl 34).  Just as the details of the Vietnam War affect every aspect of Weigl’s life, they affect his poetry.

            Some of Weigl’s poetry expresses the loss of context between generations. The United States views Vietnam as something that happened to it, but for the Vietnamese it was a life changer.  Another poem from Archaeology of the Circle, shows this when Weigl tells a story of a Vietnamese woman he met during the war.  “Her Life Runs Like a Red Silk Flag” shows how unnatural and inhumane war is.  The poem describes a quaint woman offering Weigl water who told him that she saw the planes bomb her childhood home.  The terror of that day is a worm that digs inside her, she explains to him.  She doesn’t blame him however, but Weigl also has a worm inside of him. He writes “…no words can bring the burning city back” (Weigl 98).  The United States is safe at home while the Vietnamese suffer the real consequences of war.  He continues, “…she told me I should leave./All night I ached for her and for myself/and nothing I could think or pray/would make it stop” (Weigl 98).  Weigl is uneasy because he knows how recognizes things are in the States and how wrong it is to make people suffer this way.  The effect of war is as tangible as a gentle woman who lost everything. 

            Bruce Weigl once said, “To be a writer is to accept who you are, your background…the whole landscape of your past” (Riley 46).  He writes about what he knows and what shaped him living before and after the war.  The war created a context in which Weigl lives his life.  “Snowy Egret” in Song of Napalm shows the psychological aspect of war by telling a story of an adolescent boy who has shot an egret and is attempting to bury it in the backyard because he is frightened of what he has done.  Weigl writes, “His man’s muscled shoulders/Shake with the weight of what he can’t set right no/matter what,/But one last time he tries to stay a child, sobbing/Please don’t tell” (Weigl 48).  Weigl’s perspective changed when after his time in the war.  Something was stolen from him.  He was not ready to see what he saw.

            In Against Forgetting, Weigl’s war poetry is cited as a truth-teller for what really happened in the war.  It is a reality to him and to the other Vietnam War poets in the book that real people die in war.  To the American people, the dead are just names and bodies, nothing more.  Bruce Weigl’s life and poetry is affected by the war in almost every way.  His poetry shows that no one can forget the images he witnessed.  It also describes everything in life being a reminder of the horror he saw in Vietnam.  The horror is his focal point, and making it beautiful is his life goal. 

Works Cited

Forché, Carolyn. Against forgetting: twentieth-century poetry of witness. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.

Keplinger, David. "On Bruce Weigl: Finding a Shape for the Litany of Terror." War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities 12.2 (2000): 141. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO.

Rielly, Edward J. "Out of the landscape of his past." Journal of American Culture (01911813) 16.3 (1993): 47. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO.

Weigl, Bruce. The circle of Hanh: a memoir. New York: Grove Press, 2000.

Weigl, Bruce. Archaeology of the Circle. New York: Grove Press, 1999.

Weigl, Bruce. Song of Napalm. New York: Grove Press, 1988. Print.

Another Simic Poem

"Memories of the Future" also is from That Little Something.  It portray images that Simic frequently uses: war and death. Charles Simic uses juxtapositions and opposites to make a contrast that burns an image into the readers mind.  The feelings that Simic produces come from real experience, making his work that much more meaningful.  This essay describes this poem a little deeper.

Charles Simic’s “Memories of the Future”: The Inherent Destructiveness of Humanity

                “Memories of the Future” is one of the most poignant poems in Charles Simic’s nineteenth collection of poetry, That Little Something (2008).  The poem, like all of the poems in this latest collection, fits onto one small page.  The poem consists of four stanzas, each of which has four unrhymed lines.  Simic, a modernist, rarely rhymes.  He creates the notion that the poem speaks for itself, and the structure is less important.  One structural tendency that Simic does exhibit, however, is equal lines in each stanza.  This is true for most of his work.  “Memories of the Future” makes ordinary things seem strange by describing them with extremes and moroseness.  The poem sheds light on the fine line between superficial happiness and deep disturbance in everyday life.  Simic describes humanity as having inherent good qualities and also inherently destructive qualities.

                The title of the poem implies that events in the past have the power to, and in fact do, manipulate the future of life for the individual as well as a population.  Also Simic notes that the past is unchangeable.  The first line is a complete sentence, and its bluntness emphasizes the meaning of it.  “There are one or two murderers in any crowd.”  This is followed by another one line sentence, “They do not suspect their destinies yet.”  The short statements help emphasize the depth of the meaning by appearing as if nothing more than what needs to be said is said.  This is a technique that Simic uses in the majority of his poetry.  He lets short lines and stanzas promote thought in the reader while still writing something profound.  The words in the first two lines, and in the rest of the poem, are not extraordinary, but the notion that people one encounters on a daily basis are capable of an extreme act such as murder is extraordinarily emotional.  The first stanza is concluded by Simic suggesting that wars are a means of humanity expressing its destructiveness.  He appeals to the reader’s emotional side again by using the imagery of a woman pushing a baby carriage being killed. 

                The second four-lined stanza starts by describing the pervasiveness that this destructiveness has on the world around humanity as well.  (“The animals in the zoo don’t hide their worry.”)  They are “listening to something we can’t hear yet.”  The thing that humanity cannot hear is death, as Simic describes the sound as the hammering of coffin makers hard at work.  The use of the auditory connection to death is a focal point in this stanza.  Death is silent.  Simic compares silence and loudness to emphasize what is yet to come.  It is also important to note that the coffin makers are already at work.  This foreshadowing is another technique that Simic uses to describe the state of humanity.   This imagery of death and war stem from Simic’s background and his prior experiences of war and death.  Simic grew up during World War II in a panicking and war-ridden Europe.  Once again, Simic uses these short lines to make a powerful image in the reader’s mind.

                One of Charles Simic’s main strategies to create such powerful emotion in his poetry is his use of contradictions.  The third stanza has a delight to it.  (“The strawberries are in season/And so are the spring radishes.”)  There are further emotions of love and playful cheer in the following two lines.  This is a juxtaposition to the first two stanzas that primarily deal with death.  But the ultimate fate of the harvest is to be destroyed by nature.  Simic understands the strange interplay between ordinary life and extremes and also between reality and imagination (unh.edu).  Growing seasons and love are everyday aspects of life.  Simic points out that death is as apparent as associations with normal everyday life, because death is also apparent in everyday life. 

                The imagery of goodness that will eventually die is again counterpointed by the final stanza.  The first two lines, “Old fellow bending over the curb to vomit,/ Betake thee to thy own place of torment,” exemplifies the human tendency to destroy oneself.  The image of an alcoholic, addicted to the thing that punishes him, is in direct correlation with Simic’s idea that humanity cannot help but destroy itself by death, as in war or murder.  Another contradictory comparison, this time in metaphorical form, follows this: “The sky at sunset is red with grilling coals.”  The “torment” and “coals” allude to death and suffering.  The style that Simic uses in this final stanza takes on a religious feel.  The traditional language (Betake thee to thy own…) and the burning imagery work together to form a looming hellish atmosphere. 

                “Memories of the Future” describes how everyday life and extremes of life interact.  There is inherent joy, but there is also a human tendency to kill and destroy.  Simic’s sparse use of structural conformities allows the poem to speak to the reader transparently.  He contradicts sinister and pleasant imagery and language closely to reflect that death and life are connected intimately as well.

"University of New Hampshire - Department of English - Jan. 27, 2009, Charles Simic Reads in Portsmouth." Home | University of New Hampshire.  Web. 16 Feb. 2011.

Charles Simic: A Brief Biography in Context

Charles Simic has accomplished much as a poet in his years of writing.  He has won many awards and prizes, and he continues to do so.  This essay puts his work That Little Something in the context of his career.

Charles Simic and That Little Something: A Brief Biography in Context

            Charles Simic, named Poet Laureate in 2007, was born in Belgrade Yugoslavia on May ninth, 1938.  World War II haunted his childhood, and in 1954 he moved with his mother and brother to the United States where his father awaited their arrival.  He lived in and around Chicago and took a major interest in poetry during high school.  He admits that one reason he began exploring poetry was to meet girls (poetryfoundation.org).  His first poetry publication was in 1959, when he was twenty-one.  Simic could not speak English until he was fifteen.  He attended the University of Chicago, but later took a hiatus because he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1961.  He eventually graduated with a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1966.  The following year he published his first full length collection of poems, What the Grass Says (1967).  Critical response soon followed this publication as in The American Moment: American Poetry in the Mid-Century, Geoffrey Thurley described Simic’s earliest works as European and rural, not American and urban.

            Although, Simic’s work defies easy categorization (poetryfoundation.org).  Vernon Young, writer for the Hudson Review, shared this feeling when he wrote: “Simic, graduate from NYU, married and a father in pragmatic America, turns, when he composes poems, to his unconscious and to earlier pools of memory” (poetry foundation.org).  Simic started making a name for himself in the mid seventies with his publication of Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk (1974).  His talent in surrealism really culminated in this work.  He lets obscurity tell a story in each poem: “Green Buddhas / on the fruit stand / we eat the smile / and spit out the teeth” (Simic 1974).  He also became very appreciated for his skillful balance of humor and sorrow. 

            One extremely strong aspect of Simic’s poetry is the fact that it has changed very little throughout his extensive career (poetryfoundation.org). Ian Sampson said in a review he wrote in Guardian, “Simic’s work reads like one big poem or project” (poetryfoundation.org).  The repetition of theme in Simic’s work is scrutinized as well, but critics like Sampson argue that this repetition is directly linked with the meaning of his work and the story he tells. 

            Simic has accrued many recognitions, awards, and prizes throughout his career.  He has won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and at the same time the Wallace Stevens Award and the appointment of U.S. Poet Laureate (poetryfoundation.org).  In addition to poetry, Simic is recognized as a prolific translator, essayist, and editor.  He has translated the work of French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovenian poets (poetry foundation.org).  He taught English at the University of New Hampshire for more than thirty years as well.  In total, Simic has completed twenty-nine collections of poetry from 1967 to 2008 (“Charles Simic”).

            His most recent poetry collection publication is his work That Little Something which was published in 2008.  This book, like his others, describes the relationship between everyday life and life’s extremes.  “Everything about you / My life, is both / Make-believe and real” (Simic 2008).  Even though he is now seventy-two years old, Simic shows little sign of resigning from writing extraordinary poetry. 

Examining a Self-Titled Poem by Charles Simic

This short essay focuses on a Charles Simic's poem in his collection That Little Something. The poem is describing a search for something that can never be found.  "That Little Something" itself is short as well, adding to the depth of Simic's work.  Simic uses a modern technique of saying something very short to make a huge statement.  This is the first of four essays concerning That Little Something.

                Charles Simic’s childhood was the product of a war-torn Europe during World War II.  The harsh times that he experienced helped form his depiction of the world and the inherent cruelty that living in this world brings.  “Simic uses his own experiences to compose poems about the physical and spiritual poverty of modern life” (Poetry Foundation).  The pain that Simic has experienced is reflected in his disappointed tone in this poem.  The self-titled poem in his 2008 book That Little Something is about something important that is being looked for but will never be found.

                The poem does not follow any patterns concerning rhyme, but there are four stanzas of four lines each . There is a sense of free verse in this poem, as there is in many modern poems and many of Simic’s other poems.  Assonance does seem to play a role in emphasizing the sound of how the poem is read, however.   In the last stanza, “off” and “on” are emphasized as inclinations of anxiety or nervousness as if the character was fidgeting.  The third stanza uses assonance to create a smooth string of words to contrast the harshness of the previous stanza.  “Afternoon,” “good,” and “cool,” are all used here to add cohesiveness to the lines.  Right after that, the speaker asks a question to disrupt the floating description of a summer afternoon.  The meter is not confined to any specific guidelines either.  This stresses the importance of the message in the last stanza, by showing that the content is the main concern of the writer.  The stanzas seem to rise and fall like a story was being told or an argument was being made.  Simic uses the modern technique of doing away with flamboyancy to create a “realness” factor.  Simic disregards traditional limitations to show that true emotion cannot be confined by structure. There is also some semblance of sentence structure.   There are a few long sentences that set the scene, but the second stanza takes on the appearance of a list of thoughts and eventually ends in an ellipsis.  There is a powerful effect created by Simic’s use of two questions in That Little Something.  They are both rhetorical and have implied answers.  This sticks out when reading this poem, which tries to avoid emotion in a way that objectifies the observation of emotion.  Simic wants the reader to know that there is only one right answer to each question.  The first question acts as the turning point, and the second question concludes the poem by completing the whole picture. 

                Although Simic does use poetic devices to deliver a meaningful thought, he heavily relies on the content of the work to speak for itself.  He is careful to avoid wordiness, and he makes his point by painting a picture.  The situation in “That Little Something” starts as a man helping a female partner to find a lost pearl in a street.  He defines the situation as trivial in the man’s eyes, but then shows the end result as the extreme value in the memory of that situation, as the man misses interacting with the woman.  The metaphor is developed throughout the poem to accurately describe the sense of longing more than the any type of structure does.  Simic’s technique is presenting the bare bones of the poem and letting his imagery create the emotion. 

                The poem is about realizing importance in relationships and the pain from under appreciating them.  It reads as if it is split into two different sections.  The title is the object of interest.  The “little something” takes on two very different roles in the poem.  The object, a pearl, is first portrayed as something that caused annoyance.  The pearl was very unimportant to the speaker.  The line “thinking, not in a million years…” describes an irritated partner in a relationship.  The man is telling himself that he has better things to do with his time than look for something so small that will never be found.  

 In the third stanza, however, the scene is changed to a reflective view, treating the situation as a distant memory.  The last line in the third stanza “In the meantime, what ever became of her?” reveals that the woman in the speaker’s life is no longer present.  Simic creates an importance in the memory of the woman now.  He does not give us much information concerning her.    Then he describes a pain buried in that memory.  All the reader knows is that the woman represents a dark spot in the man’s history.  It is regret that makes the male think about the woman, her pearl, and the emotion that happened that day.  The emphasis on that “little something” is now of it being important instead of inconvenient.  Simic ends with an ironic question that leads to the realization that the memory should have happened differently. 

Charles Simic’s voice in “That Little Something” is vague, but a very strong emotion is portrayed just by a few short stanzas.  He uses a significant memory in a male figure’s mind to describe the pain of a relationship mistreated.  The darkness that comes from overlooking details that matter in life is portrayed in the man regretting how he had acted in the past.  The moment that was shared should have been valued.  Simic describes the pain that comes from not appreciating relationships that are important to us.