Article first published as Memorial
Day Postscript on Technorati.
As usual, I attended a Memorial Day Parade this year. I watched veterans and active servicemen and women march with town officials, school bands, and children’s sports and service groups. But this year I set my gaze longer on the men and women who passed by in military uniform, thanks to a different sort of Memorial Day parade I watched Saturday night – a parade of poems.
Connecticut poets Michael F Lepore and Lisa L. Siedlarz, editor of the Connecticut River Review, shared their published war poems at The Buttonwood Tree to a filled room of friends, neighbors, family, and servicemen. Most of us had driven to Middletown under overcast skies, heavy with the day’s humidity. The heat had settled in the venue too.
A s Lepore, a Vietnam War veteran who lives in
Glastonbury, was introduced I watched a thunderstorm break out the window. I
felt my forehead, soaking wet, as he spoke of his commission as a lieutenant in
the US Naval Dental Corps, having served with the 2nd Marine
Division at Camp Lejeune, NC, where he was given independent duty at an
outlying facility called The Rifle Range. There he saw Marine recruits, coming
from basic training at Parris Island (SC), leave for combat duty in Vietnam. “Young
men and women intellectually and emotionally unprepared for the guerilla
warfare, so different than WWII,” said the bearded poet. His American flag
lapel pin marked a striking contrast against the deep browns of his shirt and
suit jacket. Yet, he didn’t look as if the heat bothered him as he started to
read “Rookie.”
Crouched ankle deep in muck
the hard part – waiting, knowing
the enemy is out there, but not where
or how many.
The poem ends with the young recruit forever
changed by “a rippling aria of destruction,” and the view of “his enemy
tattered to shreds, a julienne salad.” My attention, drawn away from the room’s
temperature, settled onto this veteran’s parting comment that war tallies no
winners, “only different degrees of losers.”
Siedlarz, dressed more comfortably in a tank top, acknowledged the veterans in the house and reminded us all that Memorial Day – first called Decoration Day – has been honoring the men and women who died while serving the American military since just after the Civil War.
I was already familiar with Siedlarz’s
debut collection I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball, about her brother’s life as a soldier in Afghanistan, published by
Clemson University in 2009. Her powerful and varied points of view emerge
through three sections: Sister speaks, Brother speaks, and Pictures speak. Three years ago the collection brought the climate, conditions, cause,
and calamity of the war to me as no news story could.
Siedlarz began with, appropriately, Memorial Day, a poem that compares a hometown USA commemoration of a fallen 20-year-old PFC with her brother’s regiment’s BBQ “just like ours, burgers, dogs, salads,” in dusty, 100-degree Afghanistan. He had reported the details of the desert celebration in an email.
Last year Siedlarz, who lives
in New Haven, followed I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball with
an extended collection: What We Sign Up For: War Poems. She
added a What We
Don’t See section. When she read, acutely
aware of the graphic imagery of her poems, she sometimes stopped to ask the
audience, “Are you OK? Should I go on?” before
moving from one poem to another - and then on to her last poem of the
night, “Why I Don’t Watch Good Morning America”. This
poetically registered complaint against news coverage of the war includes the dichotomies of
A scroll bar for the number
All of which contributes to why I’ve
begun to skip morning news shows myself these days, why I grew accustomed to
the heat at the Buttonwood Tree poetry reading, and why I found myself
gazing deeper into the faces of the
military who marched in this year’s Memorial Day parade two days later.
As usual, I attended a Memorial Day Parade this year. I watched veterans and active servicemen and women march with town officials, school bands, and children’s sports and service groups. But this year I set my gaze longer on the men and women who passed by in military uniform, thanks to a different sort of Memorial Day parade I watched Saturday night – a parade of poems.
Connecticut poets Michael F Lepore and Lisa L. Siedlarz, editor of the Connecticut River Review, shared their published war poems at The Buttonwood Tree to a filled room of friends, neighbors, family, and servicemen. Most of us had driven to Middletown under overcast skies, heavy with the day’s humidity. The heat had settled in the venue too.
Crouched ankle deep in muck
the hard part – waiting, knowing
the enemy is out there, but not where
or how many.
Siedlarz, dressed more comfortably in a tank top, acknowledged the veterans in the house and reminded us all that Memorial Day – first called Decoration Day – has been honoring the men and women who died while serving the American military since just after the Civil War.
Siedlarz began with, appropriately, Memorial Day, a poem that compares a hometown USA commemoration of a fallen 20-year-old PFC with her brother’s regiment’s BBQ “just like ours, burgers, dogs, salads,” in dusty, 100-degree Afghanistan. He had reported the details of the desert celebration in an email.
wounded by roadside bombs, full coverage
only when friendly fire causes death,
or a soldier empties his clip into
civilians
because his buddy was snipered.
Boys come home with hostile fire
looped in their minds. News clips gloss
over
second and third tours, ignoring
families
widowed to this label of freedom.
Wounded, 25,000 and rising.
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