In a Station by the Delta

          review of Post‑Vietnam Stress Syndrome, poems

                      by Bill Shields, SAMISDAT, Vol. 51, #4, sub. price $15.00 for 500 pages; for this issue only I'd suggest sending at least $2.00.

          These 21 poems by Bill Shields are an unrelenting cry from the wound in America's industrial heartland; Shields writes in his dedication, a dedication struggling against sounding like an obituary: "...living with a green‑eyed librarian outside of Pittsburgh, the real heart of darkness.  Would like to dedicate it to Kathleen, who has held me through some of the fiercest firefights I ever dreamed of."  These poems are incoming rounds of misery and hope‑‑ misery because they record what that war continues to do to all of us, hope because the act itself of recording them proclaims values this country forsook when it sent its 19 year olds to fight and die and to return as pariahs, denied VFW benefits and compensation for the ravages of Agent Orange.  Needless to say, Dan Quayle wouldn't care for this poetry. .   These poems are more than rage, however.  They also challenge the poetry of the past as they attempt to signal the future.

Think of Ezra Pound's most famous Imagist poem, "In a Station at the Metro" while you read Shields' poem "The Syndrome":

          I was standing in line at the 7/11 with a coffee

          to go, wishing I was in the Delta

          dreaming I was home.

Shields takes the economy of language expression Pound championed as he opened our literature to the Orient and shows how the East has wrecked its revenge upon us.  He exposes the static nature of the Poundian image, how Pound turned time into space, the essential Fascist enterprise. Shields makes space temporal, keeps the imagery moving.  Perhaps this also comes from his Vietnam experience, is his way of stating that a static image is a target in the enemy's gunsights; whatever the reason, Shields exposes this Poundian metamorphosis of the East into the Beast, as Godzilla‑like the economies of Japan and Korea are used as models to swallow up the spirit of the American worker.  Shields is a dangerous man because he refuses to forget what has been done to him and to a whole generation; and forgetting is what those who sent him to Vietnam want more than anything else.  Shields is writing directly out of his body.  His body cannot forget.  His wounds are not going to go away by themselves.  They will never go away.  But these poems are a recognition that poetry can be made from all that attempts to destroy poetry.  He's done a terrible thing; he's made his wounds sing.  We need to listen and we need to remember.  And not incidentally, we should recognize his skill, expertise, mastery of the short poem:  "The Weaning"   I went back / to the A / Shau / Valley / for a pack / of cigarettes / & never / came / home / again.

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