Customer Reviews

Last Lambs: New & Selected Poems of Vietnam

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Modern poetry has become more and more obscure and increasingly obtuse. Last Lambs is a refreshing movement away from the didacticism of most recent poetry and offers much insight into the personal experience of participating in the Vietnam War. The "ghosts" of that war will be with us in nightmares for most of history. To have these poems at hand might well remind us that there is no reason to repeat our mistakes. Bill Bauer captures that less than admirable experience and presents far reaching considerations. All those who read "Fragment of a Letter" might take to heart the promise "they'll write when they get home." This book is the keeping of that promise. Readers would be advised to also write after they read this break through poetry. It is historically accurate, personally exact, and well intentioned. "...the man who was robbed of his laughter by the killing searches for it everywhere" leaves us all searching the"barrel" of our historical "throat" and the title to those lines, "Joy", reminds us that complacency might well be the greatest thief to joy. In "Side Glance", Bauer states "I am the bastard boy/of the World Wars " as are the multitude of senior citizens and the two generations after them that occupy the United States. Bauer does not trivialize the price paid for those wars. He does not trivialize the price paid for Vietnam. In "Warning" he explains it to vandals- "Let this wall be./It belongs to them./They paid for it."- and the reader knows that this would be true of any of the war memorials. Bauer in that same poem advises the would be vandals, "Slide your fingers over their names/and tell me you can't hear/the echo of their voices/chanting peace, peace." The poems in this volume allow us to slide our fingers and our minds over the names and the unknown names of those who gave their lives in Vietnam. These poems also allow us to "slide our fingers" over the names of those we know who returned from Vietnam and tried to retreive their former lives. The ghosts of those lives haunt those verterans daily. These poems allow us to look at the ghosts and enable us to identify with them. They allow us to look at the "ghost" that guides us and, in the sense of clear, precise, excellent poetry, provide us with much to contemplate.