From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath. - Review - book reviews

When it does not tend toward the maudlin, war poetry often explores politically troublesome and artistically dubious tuff. That's why it came as such a pleasant surprise that the finest poetry anthology of 1998 was From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (Scribner, 1998). Edited by Philip Mahony, an adjunct teacher of poetry at New York University and a seventeen-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, From Both Sides Now gathers Western poets--Grace Paley, Allen Ginsberg, Margaret Atwood, Denise Levertov, and W.S. Merwin--and the unknown Vietnamese orphans, soldiers, widows, and priests into a vibrant chorus of voices.

Mahony's anthology takes on something of a narrative character as it traces the great events of the war in poems from divergent perspectives. Le Dan's "Child of My Lai" shares the common language of experience with Richard Ryan's "From My Lai the Thunder Went West," and former U.S. Air Force pilot Walter McDonald's "After the Fall of Saigon" is juxtaposed with Hanoi-born Nguyen Chi Thien's "As Those Americans Flee."

In many senses, this book is more history than standard poetry anthology. It tells the story of the war, about which Thich Nhat Hanh, the poet who chaired the Buddhist Peace Delegation at the Paris Peace Talks, wrote: "Whoever is listening, be my witness: I cannot accept this war. I never could, I never will. I must say this a thousand times before I am killed."

John Nichols is the editorial page editor for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin.

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