A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War

63, [1] pp. A collection of poems published by The American Writers Against the Vietnam War, with contributions from quite a range of individuals, some rather unlikely candidates for such a collection. Writers include: Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Robert Duncan; Walt Whitman; Robert Creeley; Abraham Lincoln; John F. Kennedy; and even Adolf Hitler and Herman Goering. "A Poetry Reading against the Vietnam War (1966), edited by Robert Bly and David Ray, was the first significant protest volume [of American poetry]. More than any other group, American poets, both veterans and nonveterans, in thousands of poems written during and after the war chronicled the changing, often conflicting attitudes and experiences of men and women fighting in Southeast Asia. Poetry about Vietnam falls into three general categories: political protest poems, usually written by established poets who had not been to Vietnam; verse novels, in which chronologically linked poems depict one person's experiences at war; and the hundreds of usually short, personal lyrics that present individual scenes, character sketches, or events." -- John Clark Pratt