Voices of the Valley: Montana poets and war
Montana poets and war. In two days, our country will commemorate the 249th year since the signing of our Declaration of Independence from England and King George III. American poets have written from the first skirmishes of the War of Independence through our recent wars in this decade.
Today, we acknowledge "combat poets" as veterans who write about loss and fear in a firefight — without celebrating war. In sharing these personal memories of combat with our independence, we experience, to some degree, the human costs that make possible our celebration.
In July 1776, our colonies were in the second year of an eight-year war with the English. Philip Freneau, a teacher and combatant, enlisted from New Jersey to fight in the war. Freneau wrote "A Political Litany" in 1775. Here are four lines of this multi-stanza poem.
Thrice happy we who long attacks have stood,
And swam to Liberty thro' seas of blood,
The time shall come when strangers rule no more,
Nor cruel madness vex from Britain's shore.
Richard Hugo, a nationally known professor and poet who taught on the Missoula campus from 1961 to a few months before his death from leukemia in 1982, flew 35 combat missions in Italy during World War II. Hugo crashed twice. I was a student of Hugo, and we shared our combat experiences, as he did with other combat veterans, in his office and infrequently during class. Hugo published "In Your War Dreams" in 1971.
You must fly your 35 missions again.
The old base reopened. The food is still bad.
You are disturbed. The phlegm you choked up
mornings in fear returns. You strangle on the phlegm.
You ask, "Why must I do this again?"
A man replies, "Home."
Most poets write with private words to describe personal experiences and meanings. The perceptive reader will sense this relationship and how the poet emotionally possesses the poem's vocabulary. Hugo would say that this translation and understanding "is one of the mysteries and preservative forces of poetry and art."
Mandy Smoker, a member of the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes and Poet Laureate of Montana from 2019 through 2021, published four books of poetry and many academic papers as M.L. Smoker. While not a veteran, Smoker understands the combat poet from related experiences. In the second stanza of her poem "Another Attempt At Rescue," Mandy writes:
When I first began to write poems
I was laying claim to battle.
It started with a death that I tried to say
was unjust, not because of the actual
dying, but because of what was left.
What time of year was that?
I have still not yet learned to write about war.
I have friends who speak out — as is necessary —
with subtle and unsubtle force
But I am from this place, and a great deal
has been going wrong for some time now.
In closing, I will share an experience from my reconnaissance team more than fifty years ago. Our mission focused on quietly gathering information that would become intelligence for operational planning. Though we moved slowly and looked like small bushes or tree trunks, the other side occasionally discovered the team. From the poem "Nam Lear," 1971.
The day John died
We carried him
Down the mountain,
Away from the fighting.
At the edge of a clearing
We checked his dressing
And listened for men
With tracking dogs.
And in that silence
He was gone.
Charles Bickenheuser lives in Plains.