Customer Reviews

From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath

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Mahony has done what no one before him was able to do--get a "big publisher" in this case Scribners and Simon & Schuster to publish a Vietnam War Poetry Anthology in both a hardcover and paper edition and make it available to a variety of markets. Except for W.D. Ehrhart who got Avon to print an early anthology in l985--which was promptly "dumped" , no American publisher has touched the subject of Vietnam War poetry. Now we have Mahony's From Both Sides Now with its multi-faceted approach and a pretty sharp intro by its editor. A fine text for classroom use since it affords a view of veterans from both sides, as well as other more well-known poets including Sharon Olds and Philip Levine,etc. The anthology is well-organized, and in some cases especially poignant since it presents poems by poets whose work is not known to the American public. This is an extremely accessible book, rich with the real loss and melancholia of our longest war.

This book was exciting in two ways. One, the poetry was wonderful, combing poets who are quite famous with poets who are published here for the first time. Second, it recreated the Vietnam experience in a way I hadn't experienced in years. I especially enjoyed reading the dozens of poems in this book that were written by young Vietnamese-Amercan and Amerasian poets.