Poems Of Love And War

10/13/201010/13/2010

Vietnam Gray lead and shiny yellow brass Pushing death From a stainless steel gun Thats not made of flesh: Its integral parts lubricated By oil and grease To withstand the heat and humidity, But what is there to erase The red stain On white cloth that covers The pain On a moving part of anatomy Or the look on a human face?

Sacred and secular poems of the Creek Tribe.

Love & War: Poems of an American Soldier is a collection of poems written by the American poet Anthony J. Sellars, set in the time before, during, and after his service in the U.S. Armed Forces. The collection encompasses over fourteen years of writing poetry. His poetry centers on the topics of love, life's struggle, family, the emotional effects of war, and the human need to reconnect and pursue God. The author writes from a patriotic heart that combines deep devotion, a love for the nation, and spiritual insight with the firsthand experiences of combat operations in Afghanistan and the emotional aftereffects of war on a soldier's psyche. Lessons and expressions from the heart vividly illustrate the possibility of finding one's pathway to hope through marital hills and valleys by communicating what is often difficult to say. A must read for people who are struggling in their marriages with the difficulties of a soldier returning home. It will help them to reconnect and reignite the flame of marriage, the living symbol of mankind's relationship with God. This deeply personal collection exposes the devotions of a person's soul and the journey to find his way back into the heart of his beloved, while also reconnecting to God and chasing one's own destiny.

The authors of oral literature in the Pashtun language create their work at a far remove from any books. Generally deprived of the support of schools and universities, their compositions are inseparable from song. Their poetry is never declaimed; rather, their rhyme and rhythm have melodic value. These popular improvisations do not exalt mystic love. In them there is no aspiration whatsoever to an unfathomable and incommunicable heaven, nor devotion to the lord, nor praise for an absolute master, nor any Adonis. To the contrary, they are songs of the earth. They celebrate nature, mountains, rivers, dawn and night’s magnetic space. They are songs of war and honor, shame and love, beauty and death. The repression of Afghan women has caused untold suffering, particularly through moral subjugation. Infant daughters and their mothers are received with scorn and shame, and lead lives of subordination and humiliation. Their rebellion against these tribal codes comes only through suicide and song. Translated from the Pashtun into French by the eminent Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, the greatest Afghan poet of the twentieth century, his text has been rendered into English in the expert hands of Marjolijn de Jager of the Translation Department at NYU.

Most recent book of poems is Things on Which I've Stumbled. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2007 --Book Jacket.

Robert Hilliard's collection of poetry carves a distinguished path for us to navigate in a world between the anguish and power of war and the beauty and innocence of love. Hilliard's poems "For Jo Ann: Love Senses" and "Blind Love" shows us of the enchantment and tenderness of affection. His evocative use of language is visceral and unreeling in "Black Blood," written on the front lines of combat during WWII, and "Silence." Poems of Love and War remind us that it is our deep, everlasting connections to each other that command our hearts and minds. RENUKA RAGHAVAN, Out of the Blue __________________________________________________ Robert Hilliard has lived a most interesting life, and now at age 92 honors us with his first book of poems. Poems of Love and War has its share of romance ("For where I once saw many things/I now see only you"), but it is the poems he wrote as a soldier in WWII in Europe (he was at the Battle of the Bulge) and shortly thereafter that give the collection its backbone. The representative poem "Did I see Versailles...?" shows us what war is really like from the infantry soldier's point of view: "There were no chateaus, no sights to pick. I'm sorry, sir, just Krauts to lick." Hilliard is giving us a history of a generation in these poems. I'll bet that somewhere members of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Romantic English poets he so loves are saluting him and agreeing that poetry ...pierces the darkness/turns shadow into light." TIM SUERMONDT, Election Night and the Five Satins ___________________________________________________ In Poems of Love and War, we can be sure that Robert Hilliard does not hold back on either. With poetic voice that ranges from deep love poems-"no parable/ or mundane speech/ for love's literate glow" to the bare yet harsh poem of guns-"Will they kill us just for sport?"- to the warnings of a country divided-"Weep for your country/cry for your land," Hilliard gives an outstanding view of well-conceived, masterfully written poetry as only a poet who has traveled the ages can. Ripe with poetic devices, Hilliard offers poems on love, war, aging, and America, with expressive variation. This is a book I want in my collection. ELIZABETH SZEWCZYK, Fragments of Survival