On Being Asked To Write A Poem

Against The War In Vietnam

By: Hayden Carruth

Well I have and in fact

more than one and I'll
tell you this too

I wrote one against

Algeria that nightmare
and another against

Korea and another

against the one
I was in

and I don't remember

how many against
the three

when I was a boy

Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County

and not one

breath was restored
to one

shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not

one
but death went on and on
never looking aside

except now and then

with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.

Justine Nicole L. Evangelio

2H4

WORLD LIT

Authors Background: Hayden Carruth

Hayden Carruth was born on August 3, 1921, in Waterbury, Connecticut, and
educated at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University
of Chicago, where he earned a masters degree.
Known also for his criticism, Carruth is the author of several prose collections,
including Selected Essays & Reviews (Copper Canyon Press, 1996) and Sitting In:
Selected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Related Topics (1993), as well as nonfiction
works, including Beside the Shadblow Tree: A Memoir of James Laughlin (Copper
Canyon Press, 1999) and Reluctantly: Autobiographical Essays (1998).
Informed by his political radicalism and sense of cultural responsibility, many
of Carruths best-known poems are about the people and places of northern
Vermont, as well as rural poverty and hardship.
About Carruth and his work, the poet Galway Kinnell has said, This is not a
man who sits down to write a poem; rather, some burden of understanding and
feeling, some need to know, forces his poems into being. Thoreau said, Be it life or
death, what we crave is reality.' So it is with Carruth. And even in hell, knowledge
itself bestows a halo around the consciousness with, at moments, attains it.

Source: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/hayden-carruth

Justine Nicole L. Evangelio

2H4

WORLD LIT

Poem Analysis: On being asked to write a poem against the war in

Vietnam
by Hayden Carruth

In the poem Hayden Carruth is talking about how many times he has

written a poem about war.

He has seen war since he was a boy. In Abyssinia Spain and Harlan

County.
He has seen war against Algeria and against Korea.
The poem talks about what happens in all wars. PEOPLE DYING.
In all the wars he has seen and experienced, DEATH is present and he
has witnessed it all.

Source: https://prezi.com/zc_5aytz6pwp/on-being-asked-to-write-a-poemagainst-the-war-in-vietnam/
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2003/04/on-being-asked-to-writepoem-against.html