War Stories

War is a lot of things I suppose, but it is not pure. And if there are issues of morality to be contended with, I think that the veterans’ stories are likely the key. They…

Beyond the Support the Troops Syndrome

I recently read  a collection of essays in Brenda M. Boyle’s The Vietnam War: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature.   Academics explored authors like Bao Ninh (The Sorrow of War), Michael Herr (Dispatches), Duong…

Fifteen Iraqi Poets

So we need poets to challenge received notions, tell us what we don’t know, ask the questions we can’t answer, and wake us up to both doom and Utopia. — Translator and essayist Eliot Weinberger…

The Poet’s Work and the War’s Work

1. I first came across the poetry of Dunya Mikhail in Eliot Weinberger’s New Directions anthology, World Beat. An Iraqi Christian who speaks Arabic, Aramaic, and English, Mikhail ran afoul of the Iraqi authorities because of her…

Iraq: Remembrance & Responsibility

My friend Laura Weis shared this  quotation with me, and I want to share it with you. We all need to reflect on one fact that has been almost completely expunged from the U.S. consciousness:…