Bruce Weigl

I attempted to read this book cover-to-cover. The pain expressed, latent and current, is overwhelming. I will revisit it in pieces until I finish, but as a wholistic review, I run short. The writing is incredibly eloquent and the ideas so sincere and raw that I must agree with myself to stop reading and revisit.
A powerful, honest book

This poetry collection revolves around Weigl's experiences with the First Air Calvary Division during the Vietnam war. Although written many years after the fact there the author's remembrances have directness and clarity. Reliving these experiences has not been easy for Wiegl or as he told Charles Simic--that in Vietnam he lost his soul but found his voice. Weigl takes on what is painful to remember by looking it straight in the face. On the front blurb are these lines from his poem--The show more last lie:

Some guy in the miserable convoy
raised up in the back of our open truck
and threw a can of C rations at a child
who called into the rumble for food.
He didn't toss the can, he wound up and hung it
on the child's forehead and she was stunned
backwards into the dust of our trucks.

What makes this collection remarkable is that for the most part the rest of the book matches this kind of remembrance in the same clear-eyed tones mixing irony, sadness and confusion. His poems have a quality about them that though maybe not always being the stuff of nightmares--still seem full of the regret of many sleepless nights--keeping in mind it is that of a middle aged poet looking back at himself as a much younger man. Song of Napalm compares very favorably at least in some respects to Wilfred Owen's World War I poetry. I found much of this work a revelation. show less

I’ve read Weigl’s Somgs of Napalm several times and have always found that book compelling. The poems at least mostly convey his experiences as a young infantryman during the Vietnam war. In this book of poems Among Elms, in Ambush quite often we see the poet still living out those experiences as a much older adult. Much of what goes on in these pages is about reconciling the past. The poems quite often bring up PTSD experiences, accidental noises for instance that take him back to show more relive those times of personal trauma. Sometimes we also see him at a VA hospitals with other veterans helping each other to cope. There are also numerous poems about post war trips and experiences to Vietnam which also for him is a way to reconcile his past.

Anyway I really liked the book. show less

Bruce Weigl’s Song of Napalm is another collection of poems dealing with the impact of the Vietnam War. Robert Stone says in the introduction, “Bruce Weigl’s poetry is a refusal to forget. It is an angry assertion of the youth and life that was spent in Vietnam with such vast prodigality, as though youth and life were infinite. Through his honesty and toughmindedness, he undertakes the traditional duty of the poet: in the face of randomness and terror to subject things themselves to show more the power of art and thus bring them within the compass of moral comprehension.”

Weigl takes readers on a journey to Vietnam in the late 1960s and explores the anxiety he feels as a soldier in a strange nation. Each poem’s narrator carefully observes his surroundings, detailing the corner laundry, the hotel, the jungle, and his fellow soldiers.

“Who would’ve thought the world stops
turning in the war, the tropical heat like hate
and your platoon moves out without you,
your wet clothes piled
at the feet of the girl at the laundry,
beautiful with her facts.” (from “Girl at the Chu Lai Laundry,” page 4)

To read more of this review, go to: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2010/04/song-of-napalm-by-bruce-weigl.html show less