{"id":5626,"date":"2013-04-05T12:14:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T16:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=5626"},"modified":"2013-04-05T12:14:13","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T16:14:13","slug":"day-5-national-poetry-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/04\/day-5-national-poetry-month.html","title":{"rendered":"day 5, National Poetry Month ~"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of the earliest poems I remember reading that voiced opposition to the war in\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t Nam was Denise Levertov’s ‘What Were They Like?’ I read it years ago at a reading of poets who had influenced the readers. I’m reading it next week at a Poets for Peace reading.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps because I grew up in\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t Nam, that war — and subsequent ones, as a result — felt personal to me.\u00a0Bi\u00ean H\u00f2a wasn’t the name of a battle to me; it was where we went for Sunday drives in the blue & white Buick. Villages weren’t ‘collateral damage.’ They were the homes of childhood friends, places I visited, playing with pot-bellied pigs and baby ducks. I knew very well what many people of\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t Nam were like, and they never deserved to be carpet bombed…<\/p>\n

There were plenty of anti-war songs in the 60s and 70s, but if you were taking poetry — even at the college level — there wasn’t much anti-war poetry. Nothing like the large & impressive reaction to WWI and WWIIi from veterans who suffered the fall-out. So finding Levertov was like hearing an echo of my own horror at terms like ‘collateral damage,’ and the PTSD that back then didn’t even have a name. Just the broken shells of boys I’d known who came back a piece of someone else’s nightmare..,<\/p>\n

What I didn’t know was what this poem — and others like it — cost Levertov: the friendship of a friend & mentor<\/a>. That’s the thing about following our principles, though. There’s often fallout. But just as often (except perhaps less noticed) is how the example of one person can bloom within another. How Levertov’s poem helped me, many years later, find my own voice.<\/p>\n

Here’s Levertov’s poignant poem:<\/p>\n

What Were They Like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did the people of Viet Nam
\nuse lanterns of stone?
\nDid they hold ceremonies
\nto reverence the opening of buds?
\nWere they inclined to quiet laughter?
\nDid they use bone and ivory,
\njade and silver, for ornament?
\nHad they an epic poem?
\nDid they distinguish between speech and singing?<\/p>\n

Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
\nIt is not remembered whether in gardens
\nstone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
\nPerhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
\nbut after their children were killed
\nthere were no more buds.
\nSir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
\nA dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
\nAll the bones were charred.
\nit is not remembered. Remember,
\nmost were peasants; their life
\nwas in rice and bamboo.
\nWhen peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
\nand the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
\nmaybe fathers told their sons old tales.
\nWhen bombs smashed those mirrors
\nthere was time only to scream.
\nThere is an echo yet
\nof their speech which was like a song.
\nIt was reported their singing resembled
\nthe flight of moths in moonlight.
\nWho can say? It is silent now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the earliest poems I remember reading that voiced opposition to the war in\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t Nam was Denise Levertov’s ‘What Were They Like?’ I read it years ago at a reading of poets who had influenced the readers. I’m reading it next week at a Poets for Peace reading.\u00a0 Perhaps because I grew up in\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,22],"tags":[1191,11,1181,1187,262,92,318,1190],"class_list":["post-5626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-war-poetry","category-poetry","tag-anti-war-poetry","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-denise-levertov","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-poetry"],"yoast_head":"\nday 5, National Poetry Month ~ - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the earliest poems I remember reading that voiced opposition to the war in\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t Nam was Denise Levertov's 'What Were They Like?' I read it years\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/04\/day-5-national-poetry-month.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"day 5, National Poetry Month ~ - Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the earliest poems I remember reading that voiced opposition to the war in\u00a0Vi\u1ec7t Nam was Denise Levertov's 'What Were They Like?' 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Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. 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