Vietnam vet adds politics to poetry
45-minute reading brought audience to laughter and to tears
Jacque Wilson
He waved people to the front of the room, joking about having taken a shower just that afternoon. He tested out his microphone with football referee calls and plays. Then he moved over 70 students to silence with his words.
Dr. William D. Ehrhart gave his poetry reading, titled "The Politics of Poetry in an Age of Terror," in the Art and Journalism building on Monday night. Introduced by his friend, BSU professor Dr. Tony Edmonds, as "the father of what I would call Vietnam poetry," Ehrhart passionately read for more than 45 minutes. Poetry topics ranged from childhood experience to his wife to the Vietnam War.
Many of Ehrhart's poems are focused on his wife and daughter. After reading a poem titled "Winter Bells" about his wife Annie, Ehrhart said, "I think Annie was God's way of making up to me."
Other serious poems included "Gorilla War" and a poem about the Bogeyman. He compared himself in the latter to the childhood monster, which he believes are analogous to American soldiers in the minds of Vietnamese children. Ehrhart read a piece comparing the "bloodless" Kosovo War to Columbine - "The president said violence was not the answer the same week he started bombing Belgrade." The audience was not the only one moved. Tears reddened Ehrhart's eyes and his voice choked after a particularly personal poem.
"Sometimes I get through it and sometimes I don't," he said.
Another poem titled "Sound Advice" read, "You should have learned something growing up, but instead you volunteered." Ehrhart volunteered to join the Marines right out of high school and was in Vietnam for 13 months. The information he gets from his experience there is what gives him such a reputation for being a Vietnam poet.
During one of his poems, a student leaned forward in her chair, eyes closed, hand lightly at her neck. Laife Janovyak thought that Ehrhart's presentation was amazing.
"It was incredibly brave at this time in our history for him to come and speak so candidly," she said.
But not all of his poetry is serious. Ehrhart had students laughing after an anecdote about a love poem he wrote to his wife.
"You have no idea how often poetry has gotten me out of big trouble," he said.
The most controversial part of his "Politics of Poetry" presentation came in the question-and-answer session after the reading. Self-proclaimed as neither a Republican nor a Democrat, Ehrhart is extremely anti-war.
"I shot a 10-year-old kid. I shot an old lady. I shot an old man with his hands tied behind his back... I just got to be like, 'How did this happen?'"
Ehrhart watched two male ROTC students walk out of the room a quarter of the way into the answer session. He called to the second student and wished them both "good luck" and meant it. When a female student thanked him for all he had done in courage he replied, "I feel I'm serving my country more tonight than I ever did in uniform." Through his words, Ehrhart spreads the message that war is not justifiable in any sense. He feels that the kids in the armed forces are not to blame, but that the people in charge are.
"Your government will lie to you whenever it suits their interest... I can't wait for the kids in Iraq to come back. I have a feeling we'll have another whole generation of angry people."
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W.D. Ehrhart, a Vietnam veteran, has written many poems that reflect not only the sadness and brutal reality of war, but also the post-traumatic stress that accompanies such experiences. While many adults have never experienced war, Ehrhart is able to give a brief glimpse of his experiences and how they affected his life after the war had ended. Ehrhart's poems bring to light the cruelty and hatred that is involved in war and his graphic language captivates his audience so that they are awed by the sorrow he has experienced. His poetry also is filled with moral dilemma as he tries to understand whether or not war is an acceptable means to bring peace, and appears to end with the conclusion that war is unjust.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/438344/moral_dilemmas_in_wd_ehrharts_vietnam.html
The Last Time I Dreamed
About the War
Ruth and I were sitting in the kitchen
ten years after Vietnam. She was six-feet-two
and carried every inch of it with style,
didn't care a fig that I was seven
inches shorter. "You've got seven inches
where it counts," she'd laugh, then lift her chin
and smile as if the sun had just come out.
But she didn't want to hear about the war.
I heard the sound of breaking glass
coming from my bedroom, went to look:
VC rats were jumping through the window.
They looked like rats, but they were Viet Cong.
Don't ask me how I knew. You don't forget
what tried to kill you.
I tried to tell her, but she wouldn't listen.
"Now look, Ruth," I said so loud the woman
sleeping next to me woke up and did
what Ruthie in my dream refused to do:
she listened to me call the name
of someone she had never heard of,
anger in my voice, my body hard.
The woman I was sleeping with
would be my wife, but wasn't yet. I was
still a stranger with a stranger's secrets
and a tattoo on my arm. She'd never known a man
who'd fought in Vietnam, put naked women
on the wall, smoked marijuana, drank gin straight.
And here I was in bed with her,
calling someone else's name in anger.
She wanted to run, she told me later,
but she didn't. She married me instead.
Don't ask me why. I only know
you never know what's going to save you
and I've never dreamed again about the war.
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Making the Children Behave
Do they think of me now
in those strange Asian villages
where nothing ever seemed
quite human
but myself
and a few grim friends
moving through them
hunched in lines?
When they tell stories to their children
of the evil
that awaits misbehavior
is it me they conjure?
From "The Awkward Silence and Other Poems" by
W. D. Ehrhart
