Slow war / Benjamin Hertwig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hertwig, Benjamin, author.

Series:

Hugh MacLennan poetry series.

The Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian poetry--21st century.

Canadian poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (135 pages).

Place of Publication:

Montreal, [Quebećbec] : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Benjamin Hertwig's debut collection of poetry, Slow War, is at once an account of contemporary warfare and a personal journey of loss and the search for healing. It stands in the tradition of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Kevin Powers’s "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting." A century after the First World War, Hertwig presents both the personal cost of war in poems such as "Somewhere in Flanders/Afghanistan" and "Food Habits of Coyotes, as Determined by Examination of Stomach Contents," and the potential for healing in unlikely places in "A Poem Is Not Guantánamo Bay." This collection provides no easy answers – Hertwig looks at the war in Afghanistan with the unflinching gaze of a soldier and the sustained attention of a poet. In his accounting of warfare and its difficult aftermath on the homefront, the personal becomes political. While these poems inhabit both experimental and traditional forms, the breakdown of language channels a descent into violence and an ascent into a future that no longer feels certain, where history and trauma are forever intertwined. Hertwig reminds us that remembering war is a political act and that writing about war is a way we remember.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Genesis

First Kill

Bush Trails

Weekend leave, Wainright to Edmonton

Drunk-Driving

Emergent

Night Convoy, Kandahar

Rumours, forward operating Base Wilson

Guard Tower, Kandahar

Ash wednesday, freedom chapel Kandahar

Salat

First Shot

Somewhere in Helmand

Three Weeks' leave, Germany

Rooftop, Panjwai

Somewhere in the Dsert

Evening at a Burnt-out school with the Tenth Mountain Division

Skoal

Easter sunday, forward operating Base Wilson

Fruit on a Wooden Table

A visit from the prime minister

Care Package, Kandahar

Homeward

Iconoclast

Food habits of coyotes, as determined by examination of stomach contents

Tinnitus, or the drive-thru window when you return

Vehicle in flame

Young Soldier

Young Boy

Home again

Apple-picking, after Afghanistan

Winter Buck

Alternate

Desire in sevens

A compendium of hands

July 22, 2006

Portrait of a family friend in your bedroom, signed camp Hallein (21/10/45)

May 2, 2011

The liturgical leap into monday, or some of the things you wish you'd told your grandfather

Rock picking

Road race, christmas day

Church going

Poem for the dead after war

Poem for the last time you wore your uniform

Otto after the war

Somewhere in Flanders/Afghanistan

Stigmata

For the soldier who slept across the hall

On teaching Tim O’Brien to an amateur hockey team

Visiting the old farm, Alberta

Stories you tell when you wish to love again

View from a slide you once slept under

Sunday mornings

Remember your body again

Quiet

A poem is not Guantánamo Bay

Exodus

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed October 5, 2017).

ISBN:

9780773551763

077355176X

9780773551756

0773551751