Words like Chopper Blades

beautiful A... I'm blown away!  thank you ...guys I flew with gone but. if they could read this they would smile.

Thank you, Anvillan. Bless you for your service. My father was U.S. Airforce. You may have known one another.

Minor AFB.  B-52’s 67 -72

Nope; we were in England at that time. He had just come off his second tour of Vietnam.  He only returned to assist with operation extraction from Saigon.

💕💕🙏

Wow! Just wow! Your poem left me kind of speechless. Amazing poem that went straight to my RL!

Thank you, Faith. I very much appreciate your response and support. xo

You are most welcome. You're a true pleasure to read. Keep up the great writing, my friend!

don't know who ocean vuong is, or was; I could always google of course, but then I'm happy enough to read this ..

Paul, Vuong is someone you should read. I just finished his novel and could truly relate. I think you would enjoy his poetry too.

Thank you, my friend, for your support.

Profound and powerful poem A...and not so much changes. Bravo!
Cheers...Harry

Thank you, Harry, my friend. I truly appreciate your support. <3

This is great. So layered. Tragic yet tipped with hope. A poem to be read and reread 👍😀

Thank you, monkeyman. Returning to read is a blessing indeed.  I appreciate your support always. 😀

I think you captured some fragments here, the clipped style  perhaps the parachute could land near the target

Landing even 100 ft within Vuong's target is good enough for me, Slip. He was a tough one who truly evoked relatable emotion.

Thank you always for your support. 😀

Dear A,

War and its fallout takes my breath away and not in a good way. No one ever really wins and the children left in the wake are irreparably torn. Reading about Ocean Vuong and his works has been eye opening. It’s an incredible look into his world.  And an Amen to your father and his service to our country. None of his sacrifice has gone unappreciated! H🌷

Thank you, Honoria. I am happy you are delving into Vuong. He is an abolsutely amazing poet.

My father did his duty by serving, but never truly understood that war. It was truly a blight on our country's history, particularly how the soldiers were treated when they returned home.

Thank you, as always, for supporting my efforts. 😀

This is amazing, I love it, it has the stark quality of the inspiring poem, but is as intimately your story as Vuongs poems were his.  He would swan dive into his past, and try to swim out in meandering phrases, never fully emerging.  You did that, even with the subtle emergence in the end.  Btw, I found all his poems in one place, on genius.com, in case you were looking for them. heres a link

https://genius.com/albums/Ocean-vuong/Night-sky-with-exit-wounds

Thank you, PR. To even come close to Vuong is high praise indeed. This was an emotional as much as writing challenge for me. I lived the Vietnam war and the fall of Saigon through my father.  He was a part of the extraction operation, and it's a horror he said he would never forget, particularly those Vietnamese screaming for rescue beyond the compound boundaries as the city was falling.  

Reading his novel helped me more than reading all his poetry put together because I could totally identify with him as my brother.  I do hope you'll have an opportunity to read it one day. It's very library worthy.  

Anyway, in regards to your notation about him swan diving into the past but never fully emerging, I want to respond with a segment from his book so that you can understand why:  

     Some people say history moves in a spiral, not the line we have come to expect. We travel through time in a circular trajectory, our distance increasing from an epicenter only to return again, one circle removed.  
    Lan, through her stories, was also traveling in a spiral. As I listened, there would be moments when the story would change—not much, just a minuscule detail, the time of day, the color of someone's shirt, two air raids instead of three, an AK-47 instead of a 9mm, the daughter laughing, not crying. Shifts in the narrative would occur—the past never a fixed and dormant landscape but one that is re-seen. Whether we want to or not, we are traveling in a spiral, we are creating something new from what is gone.  

. . .

He never fully re-emerges because everything, including the present, is constantly changing.  He is truly an incarnation of a remarkable writer. Can you imagine what he will be like in the golden years of his life? Sheesh.  

Thank you again for a wonderful comment. It's very much appreciated.

You're welcome, and thanks for posting the book excerpt, it really clarifies his style alot to read that, I just thought of a nautilus shell repeating and expanding as it grows in a spiral shape, his outlook is mathematical that way.  His book does sound like a great read.  In one of his interviews, he mentions being a child of nine eleven.  That must have brought back memories of the burning city.

Just wait until you read his book! It's like one HUGE prose poem doing the breast stroke throughout it. The nautilus is an excellent analogy to his style; it really is. Email me your address and I'll be happy to share the book with you.

I love listening to his interviews. This poet really hit home for me, and I'm uncovering every stone I can find. I really appreciate you sharing the link that contained all his poetry.  His website contains so many riches:

https://www.oceanvuong.com/press-media

"Burnings" is the book I really want; and if I had it, it would be the easiest 499.97 I've ever dropped. . .



I would LOVE to own

Thanks for the info, his website has a lot of links to check out. I clicked on one of the magazine interviews and it was really good, this is from 'The Last Magazine',

“I see my work as not necessarily building a piece of art like a vase, but rather the vase having shattered through various modes of rupture,” he says, “and insisting that down here in the dirt, where the vase has been destroyed, the debris itself is art. Even within the pieces, one can still create a narrative that one does not have to be whole in order to have a life worthy of art and literature.”

I'll PM you my address, its the same as before, I'm just not sure how large of a file it can receive in an email, but if I can than I'd love to take a look at it :)

I haven't gotten to that interview yet, and I Love that excerpt; it's so Asian cultured as well. One of the wisest lessons I learned was from an old Chinese man who told me I guarded my heart like a precious vase, afraid it would be broken. When if I would just allow the vase to break, I would never have to worry about it being broken again.

His statement is so reflective of that brokenness from which we learn to function as ourselves. Thank you for sharing! You will LOVE his book!

The vase analogy sounds like buddhism, there is a belief that if you picture something of value as already destroyed, you will come to appreciate it more, its a teaching logic of sorts, that everything is temporary, and to embrace that approaches enlightenment.  They believe the hearts mattters are material more so than part of the spiritual, that is one of the differences in east meets west..  I read some eastern philosophy books a few years ago, it's amazing the different perspective from ours.  They refer to the condition of humanity as samsara which loosely translates as duality/confusion/illusion/chaos. There is no word in our language that is an exact translation.

About his book, Ill consider just getting it from Amazon for my tablet, but thanks so much for the offer to let me read yours.  I have two entries I'm working on

Samsara; exactly, PR.  It appears you understand the concept perfectly.

I am champing at the bit to read your entries! You always take your time and infuse your spirit with the essence of these classic poets, and it shows. Which is why you are the reigning Queen of the Classics!

Thanks so much for the encouragememt 💜 ooh I just remembered, I meant to tell you that  they interviewed Marina Sirtis on Expedition Unknown, a cable tv show a few weeks ago, you can probably still catch it on demand, I think discovery channel

o O I would love to see that! Thank you! 💜

There's so much threaded through this that on first reading, you get the bones of the story. Reading it again, it begins to flesh itself out, and something new makes itself known. It asks that the reader slow down, take in each word, and rewards them when they do.

A poet like Vuong writes in layers that can only be truly uncovered by re-reading, PS.  I am happy you touched on that, it's an aspect I worried about when attempting to emulate his essence.

Slow down indeed. Poetry should be savored as life, slow and easy. Or at least I think.

Thank you for your support. It means a lot. <3

Your ability to emulate such an extremely complicated poet is nothing short of astounding. With your poem as a guide, I can better understand Vuong's poem and thus style.     
        
I only wish I could think in such an unrestricted fashion and produce such unpredictably fresh verse as this  

( everyone note the long and short "I" assonance off the charts in Stanza Two, aside from the lower "E" which is carried on through from One through Four ):   
       
"Your eyes, still echoing wide with boy         
at 17, resonating violently inside         
       
their soft-shelled socket, your         
tripwire tongue severing a moan         
       
buried in her cartilage'd throat, waiting         
to explode as a Bouncing Betty      
       
above the surface. [...]"     
    
I was born long after my father served as a mess hall cook in France WWII, in which he was distanced from the fighting in terms of duty and location. It was more of an adventure he was fond of, so his somewhat disconnect with the harsh realities of war were passed onto me.     
    
That such can haunt a person and his or her family is well presented here.     
    
I feel we are born into the families we're born in to face similar challenges and personal battles as our parents; theirs are symbolic of ours as well as we attempt to overcome where they struggled and in some cases, succumbed, in the pursuit of peace of mind and normalcy.     
    
Once again, in awe, but moreso than usual.     
    
❤📝

You are very correct in that we choose when and to whom we are born that our souls can evolve through experiences, some challenging while others blessings.

Haunting is the correct term. Like my father said, 'The war is never over for a soldier.'

Thank you, always, for your gracious support of my efforts. It is truly appreciated.

   
❤📝

This one's phenomenal. Astonishing use of language. Really excellent.

Thank you, Lozzamus. Very much appreciated.

Phew. Wonder how I missed this.   it was during my last marathon stay in hosp'/rehab.......have a very hard time using computer in them places.  I often fall way behind y'alls while languishing in them.

To say this writ is a Tour d'Force is a big understatement. Magnificent piece'o work....!

Thank you, Dan'O!  Your comments are always very much appreciated. xo

So I don't know this poet so I can't make comparisons to the style. But I will say this:

this begs to be read over and over. I say here and read it three times through and each time more and more of the story popped out and embedded itself in my brain. Well done. Very well done.

this bit:

your eyes, wide with boy—or, perhaps not;    
O Brother, the war entered us both    
 
through our father's sperm, and will echo    
until one of us releases their ghosts—    

a! A!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a punch to the gut. a chastisement as well as hope. beautiful.

On the first read I was immediately going to say "I don't like the way this looks on the page." but the more I read it, the less the format bothers me. probably because i keep getting sucked into it.

bravo, A. Bravo.

Thank you, Daisy. That is a much appreciated review. The inspirational poem is in the couplet format; thus, I thought I would attempt to emulate that along with the essence of his poem. It's definitely not my favorite form, and his enjambments were the BOSS; I actually feel I feel short in that regard; however, overall, challenging myself to step out of my box, I am satisfied with the turn out.

Vuong's poetry sucks you in with its pure emotional impact despite his form ( and he uses many ).  You touched base on EXACTLY what I was going for, so thank you a million times for that.

His work takes me home to a place I haven't visited in decades, but should've long before now.

xo

Wow, this is beyond phenomenal. I know you and and Johnny host this comp but to give us an example and set the bar like this???
I cannot imagine the experience your father may have gone thru, we only hear of them they movies and books, but the images you write here “tripwire tongue severing...” it’s the kind that sends shivers down our spines.
Excellent work.

Thank you, Wally. I was personally connected with this writer, so I think that made the difference. Not sure about raising the bar as much as conveying a life's experience; but, thank you so much for the kind words. They are truly appreciated.