Deeply Dug in

by Barth, R. L.

• ISBN13: 9780826331823
• ISBN10: 0826331823
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

Thirty-five years ago R L Barth was a Marine patrol leader in the First Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam. Today he is a poet's poet who articulates the harsh realities and ironies of war in the style of the great classical satirists. Barth writes about Vietnam, but his soldier's take on the war is startlingly applicable to the conflicts of the twenty-first century or to any war that happens to be going on.

Table of Contents

Summing Up	viii
Foreword	ix
V. B. Price
Reading the Iliad	xvii
Deeply Dug In ``Go tell the Spartans...''	1	(22)
Proem	2	(1)
Saigon: 16 vi. 1963	3	(1)
War Debt	4	(1)
Allegory for L. B. J.	5	(1)
Under Fire	6	(1)
Initial Confusion	7	(1)
Indoctrination	8	(1)
Bush Discipline	9	(1)
A Child Accidentally Napalmed	10	(1)
Terminology	11	(1)
One Way to Carry the Dead	12	(1)
An Old Story	13	(1)
War Story; or, How Hard Was It?	14	(1)
What Is Our Life?	15	(1)
Movie Stars	16	(1)
ARVN Defenders	17	(1)
For Unused Graves	18	(1)
Saigon 30 iv. 1975	19	(1)
Epitaph	20	(1)
Up Against the Wall	21	(1)
Epilogue	22	(1)
Looking for Peace	23	(28)
``Patrolling silently . . .''	24	(1)
A Letter to the Dead	25	(1)
A Letter from an Observation Post: Near An Hoa	26	(1)
Nightpiece	27	(1)
The Insert	28	(1)
Swift, Silent, Deadly	29	(1)
A Letter to My Infant Son	30	(2)
A Letter from the Bush	32	(1)
Outpost Overrun	33	(1)
A Letter from An Hoc (4), by a Seedbed	34	(2)
Letter from a Ward	36	(1)
POWs	37	(1)
Da Nang Nights	38	(1)
Running in Vietnam	39	(1)
Office of the Dead	40	(1)
Longinus in Vietnam	41	(1)
First Watch	42	(1)
Souvenirs	43	(1)
Elegy for a Dead Friend	44	(2)
``The Lighter That Never Fails''	46	(1)
Last Letter	47	(1)
Meditations After Battle	48	(1)
Fieldcraft	49	(2)
Small Arms Fire ``Why not adjust?''	51	(27)
Definition	52	(1)
Social Darwinism	53	(1)
For Part of a Generation	54	(1)
``Don't You Know Your Poems Are Hurtful?''	55	(1)
Grunt Fantasy	56	(1)
Epitaph for the Fallen at Camerone	57	(1)
``Leaves must be green in spring''	58	(1)
Foxhole Theology	59	(1)
Martial 8.58	60	(1)
The Rhetorical Tradition	61	(1)
Reading the Op-Ed Page	62	(1)
Reading a Revisionist History of WWII	63	(1)
``Tonight you bitch, under too many drinks,''	64	(1)
After the War	65	(1)
Lessons of War	66	(1)
Down at the VFW	67	(1)
``Kentucky's Money Bonus''	68	(1)
Ambush	69	(1)
Epitaph	70	(1)
Seeing the Wall, Thinking of Clinton	71	(1)
A Little Elegy for Jimmy Stewart	72	(1)
To Sen. Bob Kerrey	73	(1)
Epitaph for a Historian	74	(1)
Debriefing with the General	75	(1)
To Combat	76	(1)
``I swore I'd only be a three year cypher''	77	(1)
Notes	78