Elegy in Verse: A Selection from the V.N.M.R., 1970-04-26

oh palos bill if there's been oh yes or worse francis is below the past but then in oakland

california or fred hampton the chicago illinois or less a car then los angeles california will you moon or in providence rhode island dead and vietnam call lionel duran when socket rhode island dead and vietnam richard edward green junior newport rhode island then you know you do mr raymond that spirit pennsylvania to carry the main cabin something that james thomas reading from scranton pennsylvania wells on on low james moore was junior big run pennsylvania now daniel

and rico of pennsylvania did in vietnam then as edward woodhouse the shenandoah pennsylvania didn't get it is cheese on it door it is a lot of arabs in

and the barons elegy inverse a selection from the vietnam memorial for two readings on march the first nineteen seventy if bowls you our will on is all going to be oh oh we're on the

law joe joe oh geez jenny oh oh aw this is richard roth

since november nineteen sixty nine the vietnam memorial readings committee an independent group has been conducting a continuous reading of the names of those who have died in vietnam at the riverside church however as time has passed the audience and the number of participants in the reading has steadily grown smaller in an effort to recapture the attention of the anti war movement and other concerned citizens the ratings committee decided to hold an open poetry reading on march first nineteen seventy it is from his reading that we have chosen five poets reading their own words and the words of others the poetry of selected are jon ostrower a david henderson kenneth koch muriel rukeyser and robert lowell it might be mentioned that this is a limited selection over twenty five poets both published a non published participated robert lowell is one of america's most widely read poets now living and a professor of poetry at harvard

university his latest book is note book of the year in nineteen sixty seven and nineteen sixty eight published by farrar straus and you wrote in nineteen sixty nine just a lull chose to read three of his own poems it was asked that each poet read some of the names of the dead and the war <unk> molded so and then elements restaurant in palau pennsylvania dan stanley william grieser philadelphia pennsylvania dan fall and would do for him when rudolph france's dungey financial times reading the names and dads they're awesome and really many ways that the outset the more permanent one in november weeknight candles and abducting

walked about ten miles eerie feeling possession and i looked at the name of the man as kang where i come from boston and his name was mr boston and he gave me your run their hands and we're kind of knife in the cinematic and solemnity the whole thing come up to an hour three times some don't really been relegated the theater instead of the chapel but then the last act of poems about god when the brokerage you're not ended well their religious values got great deal of all a virgin and then i stopped doing that in the end in the news got to walk back got very useful word to use

in the liaison tara hess i think within one of the great lessons i've been assured that the first they're both short forty nine years ago were similar so that old fashioned religion and you have the worst american people that in terrible depressions and felt their more evil than anyone else and that there were people who rate a sense letting their wives talk too much or something like that their band model pure minds and again these terrible agonies of guilt and so forth and feeling damn damn damn one of many who felt this way was a great term knowing preacher jonathan edwards that ancestor of mine and he and roberts afterlife accepted was thought too much and he felt it was very evil the worst summer the earliest sportsman an

artist dawn waiting to what redness waiting a killer it's already claimed was sweatt and his red brick the blood of the sheep maps the blood of the wolf yet jonathan edwards learned how to think himself worse than any man that ever read he was a good man and he's the reason which it was fought the same thought worse each night i lie me down to sleep and rest to a three times a week i wake them i assume stands not them not two or three days seven got himself out wake up five years younger and drink away the chalice of our deaf sentence like the best

man in the best possible world god of our fathers and it is somewhat different than some thought mccain enabled i don't know if you know the argument of perfection of design there it goes like this they'll use the rat must theologian of the time of coleridge the surface or water once you look at it and say that we want to make sure when you look good natured work so beautifully that has to be a major maker gotten made well i threw you can say that and then the trouble is the dog once is leighton watson is alone where's the problem mocking i think that that

you think of the government follows a solemn old testament god what a watchmaker god has just the opposite he does nothing if not even capable of wrath it just makes things say it's a one way trip the one way flight strictly worse meaning from tripoli flying then you would say you stood in the cold light of science seeing is your sleeve as thousands of fact stranger life is the firearm fuel we the animals the objects must be here without a title be the evidence that anything that everest but living ever bought back to living when my spouse more romance a big carton david he drafted and install the apparatus for us he loved to tinker to having

perfected what he had to do to start off shrouded in moments of molasses is a mormon does have something do with war it's back of all this is happening now it's called four nineteen sixty one with a danger that you're sent through the same but they seem somewhat different than it was the time you had things like the berlin crisis and go you really citizen we might be dropping them somewhat different than exactly what you feel now that it's a form of terror its fall that even slight pun on the world that word i think that has something might fall on you and at that time if you were cameras amanda bearse might myself in here and going over new york and you'd think maybe an attack in the

region for nineteen sixty one back and forth back and forth both the pop pop talk of the old faces on the grandfather clock all our jason jr of nuclear war we have talked our extinction to death i swim like a minnow behind my studio window are and various narrow the moon lives radiant with her state is a diver under a glass bell fathers know ceo of freeze child we're like a lot of wild spiders crying together with without tears and nature wants the summer

it's easy to take off the minutes but the clock can stick back and forth back and forth back and forth by one point the rest is the orange and black orioles and swinging nest vietnam from rick james to shock independence ohio that she knew frances lee green springs ohio dead yeah lincoln eat no higher than in harlem nathaniel law frederick county ohio then novel russell long columbus ohio yeah david henderson is the poet in residence at the city college of new york in addition he

was the only black poet specifically invited by the committee to read his latest books are de mare of harlem to be published this month by ep dutton and felix of the silent forest published by poets press in nineteen sixty seven mr henderson chose to read the names of black men and women who have died or been killed in the united states rather than the names of soldiers killed in vietnam this is bob these guys

about people who believe in it one is the rise in the land of the day the egyptians talk about the americas being a man with it now seems that people respect death by law president who run the spot ice cream guy's mother mina virus he had a terrible one soared and the stars the hoary one second the top the world got a vice and a steel industry she states and short stories so the value of the home the holy one beckons the total oneness also hear the father of time the white bearded one he points to the moon is

full he nods in it speaks of the eternal ice all over the planet the terrible one cannot faces i've looked towards the moon is a stolid to have with the slide through like a faith he says all terrible one last state in the land of the dead proclaiming god's love dotted i's the show make our move ceasefire in defiance egypt with all men men of the stone blocks of ice through snow the young one held it endures and markets climb things that descended and exploded they search for the grail the proper containment all all in everything they went to the north pole to look for who they want to scotch in the book a macarthur the roundtable in the magic they walk across europe and compares they want africa they walk into russia there are dire wife turned and then throw

them between the five the been ingrained to anti american ice cream they believed the center of the recall frozen pollock frozen goal they believe they're women hall and frozen they undertook to make their own super race of lebanon or dr frankenstein poland's goblins go goals and zombies but they lost the war but then wonder with and they're immense that those innate legions of women and caused an ecological table and the chemical alliance they float test tubes of the advance in science they believe the so perfectly correct they knew what had to be they knew what had to be done or believed cold emphasize who believed they got to emphasize who believe that in a lot of bessie smith

there's been a lot of them they're making joseph biden then in oakland calif fred hampton the chicago illinois a bunch of cotton day in los angeles kenneth coat is an associate professor of english at columbia university his latest book is the pleasures of peace mystical chose not to read his own poetry but rather that of children that he has taught him a new york city elementary school renee graham and crew to one sub of rhode island walter joseph because pass go i'd rhode island that in vietnam col robert drummond providence rhode island dead and vietnam hall lionel duran when socket rhode island dead in vietnam michael keaton or philadelphia pennsylvania don't get none

when asked to recalls in connection with reading a list of people dead in the war i felt confused i couldn't think of anything of my own so i could read i thought i would read some poems by children's since i think that's what's killing people is all about is that they were children and they have a lot of life ahead of them i taught in a public school in new york he has sixty one on and off over the last few years and there's this impulse written by my students there the ones i realized in simian fourth fifth and sixth grades aged nine to eleven the first is by jeff morally in the fifth grade the dawn of me i was born nowhere and i live in a tree i never

leave my country is very crowded and stacked up right against a bird but i won't leave my tree everything is dark know like i hear the birds singing i wish i could sing my eyes they opened and all around my house the sea slowly i get down in the water the cool blue water over into space swim and cry for joy this is my home for every week the next poem is by a fourth grader named jose lopez called dog oh dog how do you feel with so much heroin to you dear master oh my dear master i feel nice and warm oh doggy how do you feel with those fluffy years dear master oh dear master it was if i had super hero oh dark hat you feel standing on four legs dear master oh my dear master i feel like a strong

old dog i leave now goodbye dear master oh dear master i feel that my heart breaking this promise by iran thomas taurus which he wrote when he was in the fourth grade i was in the sixth grade and my dream i had a dream with everything brown the trees were brown as dark as brown i heard a sound going oom oom boo boo it was a count one of the wired the calloused dark brown has a crayon brown i went to the bar and i saw him doing in mali i looked up in the sky and saw something i saw the moon it was brown to my mother came down she was brown to when my father came down he was brown to it was a brown day everyone was singing brown brown and brown and the calm rolling and rolling again

the next poem is by a sixth grade girl and aimee levy called my own little world we go to the beach i look at this see my mother thinks i stare my father thinks i wanna go in the water but i have my own little world i stare i see myself i walk along the beach not another soul but me i walked to a white horse snow is her name i get on a whole title remains a nudge or slightly she walks the sun is setting the sea is quiet the sand is moist the heiress attended the skies all the colors of the rainbows i kicked her harder my hair blows in the wind on to the destiny of nothing it seems endless i think perhaps it is my own little world this is by a

fifth grade girl named vivian tough spring is like a ladybug climbing a flower spring is flowers growing in the garden spring as the sun sky and grass spring is going to the swimming pool spring is going to the beach and tasting the salt water spring is wearing a new summer places spring is planning new flowers in your garden spring is getting a new pair of sandals but best of all spring is part of nature like the baby next door he's grown so big this is by a fifth grade boy and joe wonders of microscopic so big an edge as the beginning of a new universe and nato leaves a threat to the new universe the needle is the locomotive and the thread is the train the new world is black as a dungeon the new world as a fairyland but in reality it is a thought

and this is a poem by ruben marcello was in the fifth grade when he wrote my little green plant was like a big jungle her earrings were as green as a j when i opened the box i saw all the colors of the rainbow i saw a red says red is a book i saw green says green is the sea on a calm sunny day i saw yellows as yellow as a golden victory in the fall i saw brown says brown is a little squirrel running a tree the last call moderate is one by rubens marceau was older brother roberto was in the sixth grade when he wrote this if i ruled the world i would stop all poverty by ridding the world of money i'd say the world of violence by reading of guns and to every man ten beautiful girls so people can't steal i get

everyone seven of the best cars in the world and this way our world will be the right way to do it lawrence michael philadelphia pennsylvania didn't get no john jay make us down pennsylvania didn't get no william lee mclaughlin hook's town pennsylvania did and get done peter mehlman yates broken something in that just of james melnick jr or gets turned pennsylvania than in vietnam this is biology and there's a selection from the vietnam memorial poetry reading of march first nineteen seventy on the first half of this program we have heard poets robert lowell david henderson and kenneth koch this is doubly or the army or the radio station of the riverside church

the next poet we shall hear is muriel rukeyser her latest volume is speed of darkness published by random house jost and railing james beard pennsylvania then brennan why raymond inspired pennsylvania you know it mean fall out pennsylvania than james thomas reading from scranton pennsylvania delegate michael tells me this is a a moment in the movie stands among fans of those material is informed by a story get it by eye of stone

from material and the french and american patriots about a shooting at the mekong delta they say said that with three people were shot they were armed and knew i was just shoot anything that moved and they said no there were two people they were young man and a young woman there've been moving and they said there were two very young people a boy and a girl they were non competitive poms among the scream this morning they walked near waterloo no one agreeing of the river mouths this point this url they die with a hat snare each other day a young man ms shire played out among the sea these are lives coming out of that craft men who resemble me sound is

bursting the sun to dead bodies against the leaves a young man and there'll their heads close together no weapons only glasses and waves lives classes something is flying through the high error over the river mouth country something higher than the look and go higher than heroin fly tying fines as it is nothing now but now doesn't sound beyond bigness turns into the huge nurse their police chases of the children and flames of the grown man his face buried the bones of the fallen woman how body stopped from the nipples toddlers singing the livestrong baby at her breasts i do not speak i am a

woman and the new york road late in the twentieth century and crying i will write no more young man and go walking along the sea among the leaders fresh hot day among the river mouths yellow green leaves green river is running to see a young man and a girl go walking in the donor country the war has lasted their entire lifetime they look at each other with their mouths they look at each other with their whole bodies good as the bright fire battle over the sea waters girl has done it upon green leaves a young man has done it against the sky a girl was walking kind of among green leaves a young man walks credit on sky i remember you

we walked near the harbor you were young man believing in the future of summer and yellow and green and touching and endearing in the night sky and against so this effort he believes in january he believes and the horses being on his body he believes in how young your eye wall near the river's they are walking again or the edge of warners lives they're walking their heads are close together and miles are close as the girl and the young man or near the water this is a short poem written first for the strike against the war and sixty

three and that nagin now today is it used to say that i will not work to de palma right upon today will be taken into the war machine and i've gone back and forth and in these years about it the more it what one does is taken into the war machine of the poems are not in the war machine the reading of the names of the dead i'm not in that if one reads the names of the dead and a small chapel in this building with they said nobody there there is making one's act that is not taken into the war machine but i go back and forth about what how we take a hint today i will not get too warm today

i will not support or where has my work go into the war machine where do my days go into a race of this where is this turning children go waited a full fledged children go where their wives songs go wait as my son go and i'd cry sometimes all day my wife wants to live all day for my own deep life follow the all day and all night too in your life with your sobbing as you wake going deeper into our lives as we began our own death going farther into the day to a place where we meet in conflict human throated music of contradictions a deep shared life of peace but i weeping still goes toward the old same war

tonight my life goes toward more lyme disease called the writer if i think they have a saying in western seamen in this is saying of in a way it's like a poet sen leahy he had his home almost as tony and scale and the last generation of his language now i think in the writing is tears fall from his plans they spoke for six million from his veins although he got his stories but no one spoke his language no one knew this music the music when did wall people not knowing this language it ran through

their bodies and they began to take his words everyone that is everyone the veins but everyone said no one spoke this language has called this morning whiting this morning a violent woman in a violent day laughing that's a lot of memory on the long body of your life in which most childhood use your lifetime of touch on his lips just bailing six legs to the waves of the heat that's a little plant on the city window sill to the toy aisle towers book shapes crashed together and agreed the river flashing flowing

corroded the intricate harbor and see the war is the moon the finance all people space in the song invisible and visible african violets in the light breathing the breathing universe i want strong piece and delight but while good i want to make my touch tones to find my morning to find you entire alive moving among the anti touch people i say of course of waves of the interview today once more i will try to be nonviolent one more day this morning waking the world away and the violent day and this last one just written it's called bringing bringing their life these young bringing now life rise from their

waking hours bringing know i've come to a place when they make a guest's the grapes of life and death of transformation round i hang out and desire is like peace or see the revolutions that make all things new and must be lived out washed into rivers and themselves made new and bringing their life the young they reach in their grace their mistakes that discovering bringing know i've they touch that they bringing them alive if they come to replace it is raging fire they are bringing their life their sect speaks for them their ideas will speak their acts arrived bringing their life entire they resist the system of wars and rewards they offer their open faces they offer their bodies and offer their hands wringing their life entire they offer their life they

have their own gifts make a lot of resist to resist make life they know live entire they come to this moment bringing their life's entire they come to this place john franklin regal gettysburg pennsylvania then vietnam neil edward riley sonia pennsylvania well lewis ray jr breckenridge pennsylvania that richard frank witter what's in town in civilian get my mother were on a pennsylvania bit we shall conclude this program with john ashton a one of the leading poets in new york his latest book is the double dream of spring published by ep dutton

he is also the executive editor of art news one of the leading magazines of our criticism now circulating mr ashford wrote several of his own poems and poems of walt whitman and jon will right david joerg kearney pittsburgh pennsylvania did in vietnam miles gregory wildman conshohocken pennsylvania did in vietnam david rauf wilson for land pennsylvania didn't vietnam robert alan wilson pittsburgh pennsylvania did in vietnam carol lancaster pennsylvania i'm going now to read some of my poems and i have a few poems by other poets in my car john ashbury first of several of my

own voice i'll do what the raid suggest dead and other lives that window but the tide pushes an awful lot of monsters and i think it's my true faith it had been raining but we have not been raining no one could begin to mark up this particular mass funder lay down in the heart my child i love any vast electrical disturbance disturbance could the old man face in the rain we ask more smartly by night charged over planes driven from dallas an oregon always whether one that now the boy seemed to have fallen from shelf to shelf of someone's rage that night it rained on the boxcars explaining the thought the pensive cabbage roses near the boxcars my boy isn't there something i asked you once what happened it's also further to the corner aboard the maple furniture he couldn't lie you tell mothers index but listen now in the flood of throwing

up behind the lines dry fields of lightning rides to receive the observer the mincing flag unendurable age rivers and mountains and the secret mapping assassins cloistered the moon river was markedly eighteen peaks in the city of humiliation and defeat one ending of the trail among dry paper relieves ray brown wheels like thoughts and the melodious but vast mass of today's writing through fields and swamps mark on the map with little bunch of weeds certainly squirrels lived in the woods but devastation and dull sleep still hung over the land quell the rioters turned out of sleep in the piece of prisons singing and marble factory walls def consolation of minor tombs the pack here we have the invisible rods and in some sand belly from which only quiet walking ever instruct the bird flew over and said there was nothing else to do not

mistake it silence for pride or strength or the waterfall for harbour full of light bulbs that is there performing for thousands of people in close some places to go or games sometimes there were the pillar of square stones its impact makes a white print so going around cities to get to other places you found it on paper but the land was made of paper process to look like firms mud or other we see enrolled its magic distances and then roll them up its secret was only a pocket after all but some corners are darker and these moonless nights spent days on a raft in the seclusion of the melody heard as though through trees and you can never ignite their touch long but there were homes for out of these parodies of a sharp looking and other collective places shadows of vineyards was windy city of the forest floor fisheries and oyster beds tights under the poll seminaries of

instruction public places for electric light in the major tax assessment area wrinkled on the plan of election to public office sixty two years old bath and breakfast the formal trappings shadows to make it not worth joining the oxygen we the car your plan was to separate the enemy into two groups with a razor aged mountains between it worked well on paper but there can be grown to be the mountains and the man carefully peeled away and not torn with the light a tender but tough bar and everything fortunately the war was solved in another way by isolating the two sections of the enemy's navy so that the mainland ward away the big floating ships like bounced off the hands of the small gray waves to tell them in the observatory about the great drama that was being one to turn off the machinery and quietly move among the rustic landscape scooping snow off the mountains

racing the course are ones that love its only reason the night to overflow wedding pillow and pavel determined to place the letter n the un assassinated president's desk so the stand could reproduce all this in detail down to the last autumn leaf and the affliction of human rights slowly out of the sun blackened landscape spring day the immense hall and forbearance drilling out of nine the sidewalks of the day like air to breathe into a paper city exhale is knight returns bringing doubts that swarm around the sweepers hit their fan clubs and knives so that morning installs again called hope the year that was yesterday it's what you are in so many faces the hips lips houlihan the cheers write freely laughs or saabs what do they matter there's free giving and taking the giant body relaxes though beside a stream

we can see the force of it has to recognize the secret sweetness before turns into life sucked out of many exchange is torn from than this and heard before completely did and he's it's mountain broadcast they were long in coming though those matters a little bit slowed down to almost nothing they were prison did their names honorably grafted on the landscape to be a memory command until today we had been living in their show now we break forth like a river breaking through damn poisoning over the puzzle frightened plane and further progress shall be terrible turning fresh knives in the wounds in that gulf of recreation that bare canvas as a matter of fact as the traffic and the day's noise and non stop shaking its body artist into its own contradictions it's enjoyment is far from us memories of boys and girls walk here before the great change before the

mirror mirror test taking the opposite shape of our effort it's inseparable comment and corollary but casting us further and further out what happened you're with the orange tree so that it's summer products can go back to where we got it wrong and are gently at the history it wants to a page turner we were just now floundering in the wind of its colossal debt and whether it is thursday or the day's stormy with thunder and rain or the birds attacked each other we've rolled into another dream no use charging the barriers that other that no longer exists but you've gracious and growing thing with those leagues like stars we shall soon get more attention to you and i like to read a section from whitman's didn't dress are the two homemade bombs and young man i love and love me what can

ask of my days those the strangest and sudden you're talking recalls soldier a lyric i arrived after a long march covered with sweat and just in the nick of time i come once in the fight that we shouted the russian successful charge and the captured works yet low like a swift running river they fade pass on the faith i'd well none soldiers' barrels or soldiers joyce both i remember well many the hardships future joys and i was content but in silence and greens projections while the world again in appearance and mirth goes so someone as over forgotten and waves washed the imprints off the sand with hinged knees returning i enter the door as well for you what their river you are following that noise b a strong heart baring the bandages water and sponge straight and swift minded i go with a y and the ground after the battle brought in with their prices was written progress the ground or to the rows of the hospital tent under the roof hospitals are long rows of cuts down the side a richer

region all one after another i draw near that one line it's an attendant follows polling a trait he carries a refuse they'll soon be filled with cotton racing club and do over again i can regrow i stop with injuries and steady and dressings and firm will each paying their sharp it unavoidable when parents and he's appealing it or boy i never knew you know i think i could not refuse this moment and i could do that would say i left home and like three jets train ride by john yoo right

born in nineteen hundred and died in nineteen forty from his book political support right after rain through afterglow the unfolding fan of railway landscape side and on the pivot of a larger ark and the green of evening i remembered that and i saw the gradual but still white that good and it's warm always the enemy is full of home and i wonder what surgery could recover a lost long stride and once in leisure which is labor and reverse what physically call a smile that whips but isis a cd news we went to disperse from comments leaked to several tasks we get into despair we who assembled once for hopes and common toilet and dreams or seclusion hurting are crammed full rapture always our anime czar for home we definitely far scattered cd rattles to the hub of a forest birds

never having had time to grieve working here through vivid sleep the scene opens cracked and how stones so the star's almost and birds comply the garden where the trees retire we are scared patrol during the guns behind always the enemy is full of home what wonder that we fear our own eyes look and fidget to be home alone and beautifully put off age by some change and brushing the hair and stumbled to organs like smothered runners at the tape we follow our streets of fame into an ambush then his world stars heard the great trough the blind and he always only outward of their dismantled archways awaken the smell of warm stone sound reads lifting from the dam they're segmented greene don always our enemy is our fourth home more certainly in through spoken words are from grief twisted writing on paper and bought a bike years the thought came there is no physical for the world's leo for surgery it must hot snow

tower on what so they're burning fever forever and incense pierce with arrows whose name is love and another named rebellion the twins to go split seconds the very grain crop render instance you love all poetry is not to be looked upon some passion is the moon's cup light on politics to this moon and its reflected cup light like in rome activity wealth creation whites a low always the enemy foe but these three are friends whose arms to wind without words still air great growth means to win best to calm bruce brian greene win win pennsylvania did in vietnam frank monroe kepler glenn side pennsylvania did in vietnam when arthur hoffman's weekly pennsylvania did in vietnam

richard one hopper newcastle pennsylvania in vietnam frederick martin kettle winds for pennsylvania did in vietnam thomas joseph markel in philadelphia pennsylvania in vietnam robert lori pratt raised hill pennsylvania did in vietnam richard henry taylor pittsburgh pennsylvania didn't get thomas richard temple devon pennsylvania did here in new or

are i only going to enforce a selection from the vietnam memorial poetry reading the boy it's a disability in this broadcast where robert lowell john ashbury david henderson let us call a near you all right sorry certainty offers this program was written and produced by richard roth four riverside radio w r the odd special assistance was provided by the vietnam memorial readings committee rather airy oh are

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