Customer Comments

This is a collection of stories about Vietnam. It was a painful read. There was a wonderful part where he wrote about a guy who just graduated from college and got drafted. He had a couple months before he had to report for duty. O'Brien did a great job of articulating the bewildering emotions of that guy as his time approached. I related because I got drafted and went nuts trying to get out of it. Reading this book brought back how slow time passed and how pissed off and outraged I felt. It also underscored how anti-war mainstream American society was at that time.

Hugo is a a poet who grew up in Seattle, went to WW II as a bombardier in the European theatre and returned to study poetry at the University of Washington under Theodore Reothke. The book is subtitled "Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing" and is a collection of essays about just that. But there's various fascinating asides such as a chapter titled "Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching" and one on his war experiences while stationed in Italy: "Ci Vediamo". "How Poets Make a Living" refers to his 13 years at Boeing as a tech writer who did poetry on the side. This book is just beautifully written.