Declension in the Village of Chung Luong

by Bruce Weigl

After years of profound spiritual work, our most powerful poet of the Viet Nam War now turns to our potential for redemption. The book’s locus is Chung Luong, birthplace of Weigl’s Vietnamese daughter, Hanh, and one of the poorest and most beautiful places on earth. That vivid contrast, between beauty and utter poverty, is what drives this book, allowing the poet to view the collapse of empire—one of the book’s central themes—from a new psychic vantage. While these tough, retrospective poems break into a new realm of compassion and forgiveness, they are just as steely and truth-telling as any of his earlier works, which were brilliant explorations of the damages of war and the violent potential of the human imagination. But readers of Weigl’s past books (among them Song of Napalm , What Saves Us , The Monkey Wars ) and his critically acclaimed memoir, The Circle of Hanh , will recognize the distance he has traveled. As he himself has put it, “I began to feel as if I might try to assume some kind of public voice, so that these poems feel to me as if they’re the most mature I’ve written. What drives the form is the attitude, and what drives the attitude is the particular take on diction; a kind of free-wheeling American-like regard for how words mean and how they feel in your mouth when you say them. I’ve never said the phrase ‘this is my best book ever,’ but I can say it here because I know it is and I know what it took to get there.”

Genres: Poetry

73 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jessica Freeman]

These poems have done a lot for me as I study my father's experiences in Vietnam, and I find myself returning to this book again and again. I want so much to better understand the Vietnam War, and perhaps what I love most about these poems is the way the bloodshed is just laid out on the line for us at times. Certainly, there is beauty in the language and images, but often the poems are pure action of witness and the bloodiness remains ugly for the reader. The smells, the details, and the friendships are what stay with me from these poems. The complicated and at times romantic nature of war that as disgusting as it is, remains a part of the experience of Weigl long after the war has ended stands out to me as well. How he writes about the experiences from a distance while still maintaining urgency in the lines is my desire for my own poems one day. So again, it’s the inside and outside that happens in the poems simultaneously. The books I reread over and again are the ones that do this without objectifying the moments their describing in the poem, or the participants. Weigl uses storytelling in his poetry effectively on multiple levels. Metaphoric, political, personal, etc. I get so much from them because of their complex relationship with boundaries, with the self, and the world.

[Lauren]

There are a few gems in this generally moody book, and one poem that stops you in your tracks, makes you flip to the front matter, check when the collection was published, and sit a few minutes with disgust. I flipped to the back, to see if that had appeared elsewhere. It hadn’t. I could see why. I doubt I’ll ever revisit this.

[Katie]

An excerpt from my Split This Rock review:

The poems seem restless and searching. There is a longing in them to move beyond language and into truth, but their abrupt endings and emotional distance indicate that the search is painful and, perhaps, fruitless. This longing for some truth or goodness beyond language is crystallized in “The Abandonment of Beauty at Allen Memorial Hospital.” Death lies in a corner, waiting, and the medical staff do not need words to convey to the patient what is coming: “they said it with their grim countenance,/ and with the weight of their bodies in the space we shared. “ The truth, that death is coming, is lurking nearby, is not spoken “because words make you accountable.” The truth or falsehood of words requires evidence, but knowing and showing what is known through the body are proof, and so the knowledge of death’s coming is transferred to the patient, who longs for protection, for there to be a need for beauty in this stark reality.

http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/

[henry]

Honesty, above all else, in all things. Craft is sometimes an added bonus. Sometimes he has it in this book, sometimes he doesn't. But honesty. My God, the honesty.

[Patricia Murphy]

Favorites were "My Uncle Rudy in Sunlight" and "Apology to No One."