[cultural sensitivity, racism, prostitution, offensive language/profuse swearing, drug/alcohol/smoking, violence, graphic violence, violence against women, mature themes, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, depression, PTSD]
5-stars
In When Eagles Vie with Valkyries: War and the Journey Home, Paul Hellweg gives us raw, gritty free verse poetry from his experiences in Vietnam. Using literary devices like irony, repetition, allusion, and enjambment, we are transported to the battlefield in Vietnam—a young history major’s first day on the job—or we are brought to modern day bars and brothels in America where that same vet is trying to forget what he had to do. This book is not just dealing with the trauma our Vietnam vets went through, though. It also highlights the trauma of war through the eyes of a soldier who is so talented he can turn swearing into poetry in places and convert the sounds of the battlefield into a Wagnerian symphony.
I think When Eagles Vie with Valkyries: War and the Journey Home reveals universal truths about all war to which any soldier can relate. It should be required reading for government officials who have never served a day in uniform but have no problem sending young men and women to fight wars so they can line their pockets as their military industrial complex stocks rise. Paul Hellweg is both graphic and witty, with poems like, “A Tidy Battlefield.” But there is tangible vulnerability and pain in the mix that is especially poignant in poems like, “Boots in the Mud,” “The Peace of Westphalia,” “Wounded,” and “Pain.” Some of my favorite lines are too brash to be shared in a review, but one was from Bête Noire, where after a land mine explodes under our author, he notes that as he is heading back down to the hole it created under him, “Gravity does what gravity must, and you meet the beast, maw open wide in greeting.” The best part about these poems is that they do not stay stuck in 1968, but they show a veteran slowly regaining his life again over the course of the next 50 years.
Reviewed by Jennifer Reinoehl for Readers' Favori
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