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War songs: Metaphors in clay and poetry from the Vietnam experience

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The year was 1968. A sensitive soul, a man whose vocation had become settled on helping and healing people, was thrust into the midst of one of the worst, most ambiguous conflicts in modern warfare history. Dr. Grady Harp, a young man himself, was sent to Vietnam as a physician to help men even younger who faced harrowing and desperate situations, losing life and limb as well as spirit as the carnage wore on. How does a healing soul survive?

My first reading of Harp's poetry, coupled in this book with wonderful pictures of creations by Stephen Freedman, a South African artist working in clay, was a mesmerizing experience. The emotions are deep, thoughtful, and occasionally as raw as the unshaped clay Freedman uses; the word-smith skill applied by Harp is as polished as Freedman's final products. The reader gets to see both linguistic and physical art being developed here, work that both pays tribute to and exposes the horrors faced by men in a conflict so long ago and far away.

According to Harp, 'These poems represent one physician's survival kit in Vietnam.' It took twenty years for these to see the light of day in publication. There are twenty poems here, perhaps a meaningful convergence of numbers that it took twenty years for these twenty poems to surface for the world to see and absorb. The images and feelings are those that cannot be repressed by anyone reading them - how much more then by him who experienced them first? The gamut of human emotion, hope and fear is contained in this physically thin but soulfully deep text, and perhaps that too is a concrete example of how thin the veneer of civilisation and sanity can be, particularly in situations involving absolute death and destruction.

The pictures of Freedman's clay work, emblazoned with the words from Harp's poetry, doubling as a presentation of the words on the page, all done in a stark but stylish black-and-white format (ironic, that, given that the underlying conflict was in many ways anything but a black-and-white situation) makes for an astonishing wandering through the minefield of human aspiration and despair, hope and loss, and ultimately, survival.

A great work by a great poet, and a great soul.

Grady Harp has written 20 poems about his experience as a physician in Vietnam-- a place that few Americans could have found on a map if their lives had depended on it before that awful ill-fated war that still haunts us. It appears that Harp wrote them with no thought of ever having them published. (We are grateful he did, however.) He says in an eloquent essay that he wrote the poems as a diary: "If I could arrange the day's events in poetic form, my attention could be focused on the poem, resolving form and verse while actual atrocities could be codified, then put away for now, allowing me to go on." Mr. Harp's collaborator is the potter Stephen Freedman who is photographed creating clay pieces that make a statement, as he says in his essay, in "the only language I know well enough to communicate emotion this close to the souls of all of us."

Accessible and short, the poems often start with a harmless enough image, soldiers having a beer, a comrade talking, a "happy laugh," and end with devastation and death. I have read these poems again and again. Two of them are seared in my brain: Number 16, about a favorite Vietnamese nurse who "wasted all her patients with a stolen M16" and Number 12 that shows so much compassion. Like all good poetry, it speaks for itself and is much better read than paraphrased.

War makes you do such things
as keeping an IV running on a dead body all night
so his neighboring wounded buddy
won't give up until he can be MedEvaced
to a field hospital
the next lonely morning.

I heard a lot of one-way conversations
at night
in Vietnam.

While these poems may have been written to keep one army physician sane, they speak to the universal: the awfulness of war, the suffering and dying of men just about to live and of course are as relevant in 2007, almost 40 years later, as the day they were written. They rise to the level of fine literature and deserve to be compared to the writing of Walt Whitman and Rupert Brooke, both of whose works I thought of when I read Mr. Harp's poems.

My Dad has this book beside the Bible on the mantle in our living room. He tells the story of how this book brought him back to life after he was in the Army in Vitnam.

He was so messed up after the war, he couldn't get a good job. He was a truck driver and it used to hurt his back. Then he worked at a computer store ... all dead-end jobs, he says. Nine years ago, he found your book and it helped him get the help he needed. He got a good job, got married and had me a year later.

I'm learning to use the computer now, so that's why I waited so long to thank you guys for righting such a good book that helps peeple.

I can't give my real name, but you can call me Meatball.

One of the most gruesome stories to emerge from the present Chechen war concerns a female sniper captured by Russian Federal forces. The sniper, it turned out, was not a Chechen nor even an Islamist, but a Russian from St. Petersburg. Her skill had proven inadequate for an Olympic team position, so she was selling it as a mercenary, shooting at her own countrymen. Her captors' commander, an ethnic Kazakh, sentenced her to the traditional fate for a traitor on his native steppe, to be drawn between horses. Since no horses were available, tanks would substitute... I remember thinking how savage and alien a culture it must take to condone such a grotesque vengeance.

Then I read poem Number 16 of Grady Harp's "War Songs" about a similarly brutal vengeance by US Marines. And I realized the ugly truth; it does indeed take a savage and alien culture -- the Culture of War.

This slim volume contains twenty poems written by a young medical doctor during his tour with the USMC in Vietnam. Twenty poems full of haunting nightmare imagery; of brutality, yes, for example Number 16. And of sorrow and regret and loss. And of desperate compassion, such as leaving an IV drip in a dead soldier's arm, so that his badly wounded comrade won't give up hope before the morning helicopter evac. With poetry, Dr. Harp maintained his sanity in the insanity of war. For twenty years afterward, he and a generation of veterans dealt in their individual, often solitary ways with the memories and scars. With the ceramic talent of Stephen Freedman, Dr. Harp reveals his personal Vietnam experience in the seemingly incongruous form of an art exhibit. The black and white photos of the smooth clay vessels counter yet complement the lurid imagery of the verses inscribed on them. Amazingly, the broken poetry and unbroken pottery together create a metaphor for healing.

I just read a copy of this book, loaned from a friend.

I'm too emotional now to write a good review. I cried like a baby when I read it, but they were healing tears. My father passed away recently without my ever understanding the horror he had suffered in Viet Nam.

I wish I had had this book to share with him; then perhaps we could have talked. It might have helped him too.

I've tried to get a copy of this book for myself, but it's out of print and everyone who owns one must treasure it for himself.

Thanks Mr. Harp for your sensitive, healing book that helped me and so many others, I'm sure. Please try to bring this book out again.

This book truly touched my heart and soul for many reasons. These poems by Grady Harp and the beautiful vessels created by Stephen Freedman demonstrate a wonderful collaboration of two people trying to make sense of the death and destruction of so many lives during the Vietnam War. I cried when I read these poems. That's how touched I was. Yes, I was there in 1968 during the Tet Offensive, and know first hand of the suffering that was experienced. However, I can never feel the pain, the helplessness, and the great loss that Grady felt as a doctor in helping these young innocent men face great pain, and even death. My heart goes out to him, and also to others who saved so many lives. They should be very proud, especially Grady. These poems are beautifully written, and I believe truly a healing source for us all.

If you were a part of the Vietnam conflict, or even if you weren't, I highly recommend you get a copy of this book. A truly moving experience!

One of my students whose grandfather never made it home from Vietnam brought this book to class when we were studying that period in World History. As a result, he never got to know his grandfather.

His mother told him that War Songs really helped her and her family get over the loss and to understand how that war effected everyone.

The author of this book was a young physician serving in Vietman at the time. He was so devastated by the horror all around him--his heart hurt for the wounded he attended--it affected him mentally and physically. The way he coped with the war was by writing poetry at night and by caring for his patients with utmost compassion.

He returned from the war a changed man ... a man compelled to help heal the "minds" as well as the bodies of the poor, unfortunate wounded who made it back ... and their families. The result of his labor of love is this slim volume of poetry AND some extraordinary symblomatic sculptures on which he worked side-by-side with a great friend who had lost loved ones in 'Nam.

The book was meant as a soulful offering to the dead and the "living wounded," but in the process of creation, Grady Harp found that it helped heal himself. He's gratified to hear that his book really did help the very ones he intended to help, also.

Since there are very few copies available, the author is invited (at the top of the Amazon page) to bring it out again, and I pray he does. More people need to read this slim volume ... and heal their horrible memories.

Mr. Harp and Mr. Freedman have made a great offering to the world. They are men who "make a difference."

I'm a pet groomer who prefers animals over people ... most of the time. But then I hear of people like Grady Harp and Steven Freedman and I immediately warm up to humans again. There are still good people out there!

I'm not as affluent with words as Dr. Harp's other reviewers, but I know what I like, and I like this book. Reading the book after first learning about the author's personal experience in Vietnam added a pathos to the experience that may not have occurred if it weren't for the conditions under which he wrote this divine book, and later helped his friend sculpt the clay into which they poured all their heartache and painful memories.

The war, the dead, the wounded, the return home, the meeting of hearts and souls between Dr. Harp and artist Freedman, and the poetry written on dark, frightening, pain-filled nights in Vietnam--poetry that came from the depths of Harp's tortured soul--all blended together like a symphony of love, love of two men for their fallen brothers.

That miraculous blend of powerful, yet tragic, circumstances and heroic men created this masterpiece of a book ... a book that not only healed the surgeon and the artist, but helped heal the minds of many of the walking wounded who returned from that horrible war, and also helped their families understand more of what they had gone through.

God bless you, Dr. Harp and Mr. Freedman, for your selfless collaboration, for having such a deep capacity to love, and for truly caring. Your own personal healing was an unexpected blessing ... a reward for your selflessness, I like to think.

I wish there were a book that would open the hearts of people who are cruel to animals in the way this book opened the hearts of people who previously were "cruel" to our vets ... mostly because they didn't understand what happened "over there" ... any more than some people don't understand the importance of pets and what happens to them "out there." - Dora Dalrymple

This slim volume of 20 poems is profound and powerful. I wept, I felt the inner ache, and felt the beauty of it, and with the beauty came hope and healing. If the nightmare of war can bring about great works of poetry, then somehow there must be the seed for good in everything. Though this book is about Viet Nam, it's also about today. As long as hatred exists in the world, we will need poetry like this to restore our sanity.
Grady Harp writes with a simplicity that gets to the very core of his subject...in the face of horror, he tapped into his genius

Stephen Freedman's "Metaphors in Clay" are exquisite, with Grady's words on them, they provide the perfect visual balance and are three dimensional poems. There's a holiness to them. Their shapes have an aesthetic grace, and they seem to hold a spiritual energy that transmits even through the photographs.

I tried to pick a favorite poem/sculpture, but couldn't...# 4 ? # 10 ? 11 ? 13 ?. No, this work is a whole. There isn't a single word or piece of clay that doesn't fit or can be left out...a little masterpiece that doesn't take long to read, but will stay in your heart for keeps. I'll treasure my very special copy for the rest of my days.

There are certain times in each person's life when they're so busy with the everyday tasks of living that important world events simply pass them by. And, although I'm ashamed to admit it, that's what happened to me during the horror of the Vietnam War. While our brave troops were fighting in the steamy, bug-infested jungles of that foreign country, I was fighting the battle of raising six children. They were in their formative years and I was so busy with the everyday, mundane chores involved, that I had little time to think of anything else. I never had time to watch TV and when I did, it was mostly cartoons or The Brady Bunch with the children.

But the devastation of that horrible war hit me when our brave troops came straggling home ... if they came home at all. My heart cried with them when I later learned the death statistics and saw movies about the atrocities they endured. And the accounts--of the unnatural things they, themselves, had to do in order to survive--are mind-boggling.

Even with all that, I--like many American citizens--never "understood" what that war was all about. From my own limited perspective, I could see that even our 'Nam veterans who were not physically damaged were more "mentally" damaged than from any other war in history.

My God--what went on over there? What happened to those poor, brave souls--most of them just boys when the war started? They went to war out of patriotic duty to the United States, desiring only to help another country gain freedom. What horrors did they see in that strange country so far from home? And what horrible memories still linger in their minds, keeping them from leading productive lives these many years later?

Those questions bothered me--until I found this miraculous little book, War Songs, and read the story of the author, Grady Harp, and his artist friend, Stephen Freedman. Each of these sensitive, caring men was effected by the war in different ways. Harp was a surgeon in a strange country, dedicated to caring for the wounded, while several of Freedman's best friends died over there.

Following the war, fate brought them together in an artistic collaboration for this book, with Grady sharing the "poetry of his soul" that he wrote at nights in Vietnam, after caring for his bloody, wounded comrades. His poetry was his only release from the heart-break of the war. He and Freedman, working side by side, poured the poetry, along with their fractured feelings and souls, into the clay sculptures.

The miracle of this powerful little book is that both men were healed through the process of creating the book and the sculptures! And the book has gone on to help thousands of others come to terms with their memories ... terror ... horror ... guilt.

For helping other veterans and their loved ones heal their minds and souls, I think War Songs should have won a Nobel Peace Prize. After reading it, I was so impressed by its miraculous power, I contacted the author to thank him. He tells me he's planning a second book, containing more of the poems he wrote in his efforts to maintain a semblance of sanity in that churning chaos so far away from home.

Perhaps the Nobel committee will look at it this time around. The world has not forgotten the noble sacrifices our veterans made to world peace.

Belated congratulations to Grady Harp and Stephen Freedman for creating the most beautiful book I have ever read. It's a miracle of compassion and healing. My one regret is that I didn't discover War Songs sooner.