SOURCE: "A Sense-Making Perspective in Recent Poetry by Vietnam Veterans," in The American Poetry Review, Vol. 15, No. 6, November-December, 1986, pp. 13-8.

[In the essay below, Smith comments on the distinctive traits of Vietnam veteran poetry and analyzes the work of W. D. Ehrhart and Bruce Weigl.]

Amid the flurry of special magazine issues, photo retrospectives, and television documentaries commemorating the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, one back-page item brought into focus our continuing failure to make sense of the Vietnam War. An ABC News-Washington Post poll found that "while most Americans believe U.S. involvement in the war was a mistake, one out of three does not know on whose side we fought." Among adults thirty years old and younger, "48 percent did not know that the U.S. fought on the side of South Vietnam." Although the recent visibility of Vietnam in the media temporarily bestowed...