Peter Lattu

From Both Sides Now: A Review

From Both Sides Now, edited by Phillip Murray, features “the poetry of the Vietnam War and its aftermath”, written by poets who lived through the war. As its title proclaims, this is an anthology of poems by GI’s, Viet Cong, North Vietnamese Army, Vietnamese civilians, boat people, veterans and even peace demonstrators in the USA. One relives the Vietnam War from all sides.

The anthology records the brutality of the American campaign against the Vietnamese, no matter whether combatant or noncombatant. American bombing and the use of napalm and Agent Orange wrought havoc indiscriminately. My Lai was not an isolated incident. Memory, however, can be selective, remembering only our misdeeds. Elliot Richman, in “A Poison Tree”, starkly describes the butchery of “seven guys from the 7th Cav” by the Viet Cong. The war was waged savagely by both sides.

America’s young paid a high price in Vietnam. In “Midnight at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial”, W. D. Ehrhart chronicles the rite of passage back then:

Fifty-eight thousand American dead,
average age nineteen years, six months.
Get a driver’s license,
graduate from high school,
die.

These young men never had a chance to live because of a war of dubious value. The survivors paid a high price too. In “Peer Group”, Bill Shields observes that Vietnam vets have “the highest rate/ of alcoholism & drug abuse & divorce/ & mental illness & suicide” of any group of Americans. Again in “Miles of Bones” Shields notes the disconcerting fact that “the number of Vietnam/ veteran suicides… equals the names on the Wall”.
This poetry damns America for not doing enough for the survivors.

Poetry strips experience down to its essential kernel of truth. From Both Sides Now is a history through poetry of the war told with an emotional veracity that news stories and history books do not touch with their chronicling of events.

{Written by Peter Lattu, May 2010}