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Aug 30

The Voice Behind Me

By Paul J. Kozak, Jr.

In the 1960’s during the Vietnam War, severely burned soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were sent to Brooke Army Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.  Brooke Hospital was known as “The Miracle Center of the World”; there, the injured received superior and compassionate care.  For some patients though, this divine-like intervention did not always mean deliverance from pain, suffering and the grip of death; it sometimes meant something else… I know because I was a patient there.

I remember one night in the fall of 1968. The quiet of this late October evening was suddenly broken by the sound of gurney wheels, as they clacked and skipped across the polished linoleum floor.  The smell of fresh gauze and the muffled sounds of surgeons’ shoes softly filled the air as another burn patient was brought to the ward.  The new patient was being “brought to,” as with all burn patients, immediately following surgery; there was no post op for burn victims. Read more

Aug 19

Words Are Bigger than Yusef Komunyakaa

by Dario DiBattista

Yusef Komunyakaa doesn’t return my emails. This confuses me. When I met the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet two years ago at a small house at the tiny Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, I thought I had made a positive impression. At the conclusion of his speaker’s engagement there, Yusef had even stopped me on the way out the door to shake my hand. When I queried him recently, he remembered this encounter and agreed to an interview. I am unsure why he doesn’t respond. But thinking about it now, I can piece together why.

On the day that I met Yusef, the rain fell intensely. Everyone was soaked from the short trip from the parking lot to the building. Most of the attendees were veterans; almost none of them brought umbrellas. Considering that many of them had survived monsoon seasons in ‘Nam, why should they get worried about a little rain? Yusef’s College appointed handler took a long time to introduce him — there was a lot to introduce: a Bronze Star for service in the Army as an information specialist in Southeast Asia; three degrees, including an MA and MFA at respectable universities; a collection of eight published poetry books that boasts the Pulitzer Prize-winning Neon Vernacular; and all sorts of teaching accolades, most notably, English Professor at Princeton University. Read more

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