A Note from the Author"I was first introduced to the idea of political poetry on October 18, 1970, about midnight, in an all-night Harvard Square corner bookstore. A few months before that encounter I had returned from the war in Viet Nam. To say that I was confused and angry is an understatement. I was also somewhat lost. Then on that fateful night I found this wonderful collection of poems by Denise Levertov that captured her journey to North Viet Nam as a peace activist. This was the first serious "discussion" I had read from and about "my" war. And true to what Robert Bly considers effective political poetry, Levertov used the personal to open up the universal. I was captured, and unlike my response to military "service," I did not want to escape. Instead, I sought out more of her work and other poets and, eventually, began to write my own poems...."

""Doug Rawlings' poems about the Vietnam War, full of anger, shame, suffering and solace, are hard to bear--as they should be. His poems about family life, children, the passing of friends since the war are honest, vulnerable, playful and loving. Together they allow him, and us, full humanity, an expansion of humanity that is particularly poignant in light of its denial to those on both sides who did not survive the war."" - Rob Shetterly "I have met Doug Rawlings only once, and then only in passing at a Veterans for Peace convention in his home state of Maine in 2010, but I have been reading his poetry for nearly 40 years. Spending time with this compilation of his life's work, I feel as if I'm in the company of an old and dear and trusted friend. The range of his emotions, the diversity of his interests, the keenness of his sensibilities, his capacity to be fully and consciously human leave no doubt that his has been and continues to be a life examined and well worth living." - W. D. Ehrhart