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    Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems
    Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems
    Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems
    Ebook262 pages1 hour

    Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems

    By Bruce Weigl

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    About this ebook

    A “tough and honest” collection by one of America’s foremost poets of the combat experience—“A treasure of wonderful simplicity and complex beauty” (Clarence Major, author of Configurations).
     
    With Song of Napalm, Bruce Weigl established himself as a poet of incomparable power and lyric fury, whose work stands as an elegy to the countless lives dramatically altered by war. Archeology of the Circle brings together the major work of this major American poet.
     
    Collected here for the first time—from eight volumes of poetry spanning two decades—Archeology of the Circle charts Weigl’s literary arc toward a hard-bitten and sensuous lyric. Out of the horror of individual experience, he has fashioned poetry that offers solace to the disillusioned and bears transcendent resonance for all of us. Archeology of the Circle illustrates Bruce Weigl’s remarkable creative achievements and signifies his own personal salvation through his writing.
     
    “Few poets of any generation have written so searingly into of the trauma of war, inscribing its wound while refusing the fragile suture of redemption. Here is the haunted utterance of diasporic selfhood, a poetry of aftermath and consequence, an answer to the call for an ethos of infinite obligation. In this, and in the breadth of his accomplishment, Bruce Weigl is one of the most important poets of our time.” —Carolyn Forch, author of The Country Between Us
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 19, 1999
    ISBN9780802195197
    Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems
    Author

    Bruce Weigl

    The author of over twenty books of poetry, translations and essays, Bruce Weigl’s most recent collection, The Abundance of Nothing, was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He has won the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Robert Creeley Award, The Cleveland Arts Prize, The Tu Do Chien Kien Award from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, fellowships at Breadloaf and Yaddo, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2018, he was awarded the “Premiul Tudor Arghezi Prize” from the National Museum of Literature of Romania. Weigl’s poetry, essays, articles, reviews and translations have appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harvard Review, Harpers, and elsewhere. His poetry has been translated into Romanian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Bulgarian, Japanese, Korean and Serbian. He lives in Oberlin, OH.

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    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      Too raw-edged for me, though I certainly feel the power in these poems. I'm more a A.E. Housman and Henry Reed woman. Too much, too fast, too furious.

    Book preview

    Archeology of the Circle - Bruce Weigl

    from EXECUTIONER (1976)

    PIGEONS

    There’s a man standing

    in a coop,

    his face is wet,

    he says he’s too old:

    "You can’t give them away

    they just come back."

    I follow him to the cellar.

    Latin blessings on the wall,

    sauerkraut in barrels,

    he puts his arm around my waist

    begins to make a noise,

    pigeons bleeding.

    We’re both crying now

    he moves his tongue around

    pulls feathers from his coat.

    A fantail he says,

    the kind that hop around,

    don’t fly well.

    MINES

    1

    In Vietnam I was always afraid of mines:

    North Vietnamese mines, Vietcong mines,

    American mines,

    whole fields marked with warning signs.

    A bouncing betty comes up waist high–

    cuts you in half.

    One man’s legs were laid

    alongside him in the Dustoff:

    he asked for a chairback, morphine.

    He screamed he wanted to give

    his eyes away, his kidneys,

    his heart …

    2

    You’re taught to walk at night. Slowly, lift one leg,

    clear the sides with your arms, clear the back,

    front, put the leg down, like swimming.

    MONKEY

    1

    I am you are he she it is

    they are you are we are.

    I am you are he she it is

    they are you are we are.

    When they ask for your number

    pretend to be breathing.

    Forget the stinking jungle,

    force your fingers between the lines.

    Learn to get out of the dew.

    The snakes are thirsty.

    Bladders, water, boil it, drink it.

    Get out of your clothes:

    You can’t move in your green clothes.

    Your O.D. in color issue clothes.

    Get out the damp between your legs.

    Get out the plates and those who ate.

    Those who spent the night.

    Those small Vietnamese soldiers.

    They love to hold your hand.

    A fine man is good to hard.

    Back away from their dark cheeks.

    Small Vietnamese soldiers.

    They love to love you.

    I have no idea how it happened,

    I remember nothing but light.

    2

    I don’t remember the hard

    swallow of the lover.

    I don’t remember the burial

    of ears.

    I don’t remember the time

    of the explosion.

    This is the place curses are

    manufactured: delivered like

    white tablets.

    The survivor is spilling his bed pan.

    He slips one in your pocket,

    you’re finally satisfied.

    I don’t remember the heat

    in the hands,

    the heat around the neck.

    Good times bad times sleep

    get up work. Sleep get up

    good times bad times.

    Work eat sleep good bad work times.

    I like a certain cartoon of wounds.

    The water which refuses to dry.

    I like a little unaccustomed mercy.

    Pulling the trigger is all we have.

    I hear a child.

    3

    I dropped to the bottom of a well.

    I have a knife.

    I cut someone with it.

    Oh, I have the petrified eyebrows

    of my Vietnam monkey.

    My monkey from Vietnam.

    My monkey.

    Put your hand here.

    It makes no sense.

    I beat the monkey with a sword.

    I didn’t know him.

    He was bloody.

    He lowered his intestines

    to my shoes. My shoes

    spit-shined the moment

    I learned to tie the bow.

    I’m not on speaking terms

    with anyone. In the wrong climate

    a person can spoil,

    the way a pair of boots

    slows you down …

    I don’t know when I’m sleeping.

    I don’t know if what I’m saying

    is anything at all.

    I’ll lay on my monkey bones.

    4

    I’m tired of the rice falling

    in slow motion like eggs from

    the smallest animal.

    I’m twenty-five years old,

    quiet, tired of the same

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