Richard Boes Memorial Award – call for entries
Richard Boes Memorial Award
The award is a $100 cash prize for best debut book by a veteran (fiction or memoir) and is sponsored by Modern History Press. The contest is administered by Reader Views Inc., which includes a general book award contest as well.
Richard enlisted into the US Army and served in Vietnam in 1969 – 1970 with the First Air Cav. He is the author of two books, The Last Dead Soldier Left Alive (2007) a firsthand inquiry into why thousands of Vietnam veterans have committed suicide and Last Train Out (2008). Right up to his death Richard was writing a third, In the Valley of Dry Bones. He passed away on Feb 21st, 2009 at the VA Hospital
in Albany, NY.
Entry Fee
$65.00 per title (for the initial category) if postmarked before October 31, 2009, $75.00 if postmarked November 1, 2009 or later. $20.00 for each additional category or regional/global entry. Entry fee must be in USD via U.S. check or international money order payable to: Reader Views.
Submission for more than one category or area is acceptable. Submit two copies of the book for the first category, and an additional book for each other category to be considered. For example, if you enter your book in the “Fiction – Historical” category as well as “Young Adult” and “SW Region” you must send in four books.
All books entered will become the property of Reader Views and donated to local charities after the awards program is completed. Submissions received without the entry fee will not be considered. Entry fee is non-refundable.
Registration Deadline
Authors are encouraged to submit their entries as soon as possible but postmarked no later than December 15, 2009. Any submission postmarked after this date will not be accepted. (Help us prevent judge burn-out and submit your book early! Hint: our judges read the book in its entirety – give them plenty of time to read the book.) We will confirm your entry via e-mail so print your email address clearly.
Registration
Registration form may be downloaded here. Be sure one form is included with each title submitted. If submitting more than one title or in more than one category, one check or money order may be included for all submissions.
Be sure to send appropriate number for books. (Two for the first category, one for each additional category.) Registration form must accompany each title and sent to:
Reader Views Literary Awards 2009
7101 Hwy 71 W #200
Austin, TX 78735
VVA Veteran review by Horace Coleman
Spring 2009 – THE VETERAN
More Than a Memory
HORACE COLEMAN (REVIEWER) p.39
More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam,
Victor R. Volkman, editor (Modern History Press, 1009)
Some people say “There’s only two kinds of music: Country & Western!” Duke Ellington said “There are only two kinds of music, good and bad.” Both broad statements exclude much that’s worthy.
More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam is a collection of poetry and prose. In one of the essays in the collection called, “Nothing So Bad It’s Not Poetry,” Alan Farrell talks about what he calls “Vietvet or Namvet poetry,” He writes
“As I look back at my favorite war poems, poems I’ve learned in school, I find that-to the extent that they meant any thing to me–they do so for reasons mostly of form, of structure, of rhyme, of rhythm, of image … of craft in short.”
What it really comes down to is something that gets your attention about something the writer makes you care about as he pleases you. Something worth saying said well. Craft is how well you use the tools picked to get the job done. The worth of the job is how well it does what it’s supposed to do.
Farrell reincarnates and updates Rudyard Kipling’s Tommy Atkins in Nam in his poem The Man Who Outlived His Lieutenant. Its refrain goes:
That’s a combat man ‘ere talkin’ Sir
Seen the bear an’ smelt ‘is fur
Shots in anger, CIB
Get in a fight, jus’ do like me
Before the review copy arrived, I was rereading Obscenities by Michael Casey (published in 1972) and enjoying, once again, the poem “A Bummer,” which ends:
If you have a farm in Vietnam
And a house in hell
Sell the farm
And go home
Did you hear someone way back there, way back in the day say “…Sell the farm and keep the house!?” It don’t mean nothing if you didn’t hear some variation; you know the feeling. The combination of content, remembrance and comment do the job. However, often the more you have to bring to the work to “get it” well the less work the writer has done well.
Casey made the mold-or caught the spirit-of much of the early published poetry of Nam vets: Flat in tone, matter of fact, direct and conversational, stripped of rhyme and meter; short on imagery.
For a long time vets who’d been there and lived that found it hard to publish in mainstream outlets-no matter the quality of their work. The academic and “professional” poets held the high ground-they deserved it (supposedly) because of their reputations and for bravely “speaking out.” Who were those people who thought their experience equaled others “proven talent” and “experienced eloquence?”
Everything vets wrote was just the same old story, a fight for survival-not glory-’ comic grossness, callous humor. Although More Than A Memory is uneven in quality, it has high points.
Marc Levy uses the Casey approach well in his poem Peace Time. It lists the names soldiers had for combat and describes what happened in spare and matter of fact language like Jack Webb’s policeman Sgt. Friday or cowboy John Wayne or Clint Eastwood might (with effective repetition).
One verse goes:
They walked into our patrol
Or we walked into theirs
Or we ambushed them
Or they’d ambushed us
Or we walked into each other
Or they hit us with mortars
Or overran us with sappers
Or booby-trapped our automatics
Or we called in Arty
Repetition with variation of the same ol’ deadly same ol’ recreated with words describing the ways death and numbness came.
Levy’s short prose piece Whatever You Did in War Will Always Be with You gives the lowdown on the lingering regret too many still have, says what PTSD is and briefly describes some treatments for it.
Levy’s prose pieces “Torque in Ankor Wat” and “Off the Road” are gritty travelogues of his odysseys in Cambodia and Vietnam respectively. Preston Hood, the writer with the most publishing credits in the contributors’ notes, paints an image of Boats Near Hue. Vietnam, 1997 with lines like
“The sea: white beach in formless prayer” and “Dark clouds shoulder into a gathering storm.” In the last verse of Pop Smoke, Dayle Wise brushes aside the macho shield of invulnerability warriors carry:
We’re tired and want to go home.
Mother take us back.
Let us suckle in your arms.
We’ve been very bad.
There’s a thing called Cowboy Poetry. It has its own form, style, subject matter, situations, types of people and behaviors, locale and target audience. It’s of the people, populist and not academic or traditional–except in its own tradition. Vietvet/Namvet poetry same same. You pay your money, spend your time and some of it satisfies. Which implies the obvious and opposite.
Horace Coleman was an Air Force Air Traffic Controller / Intercept Director in Vietnam (/967-68), he also served in Tactical Air Command, Pacific Air Command and North American Air Defense. He speaks at grade schools, high schools and churches and lives in Long Beach, CA.
Memorial Day thank you to vets
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VVA’s Marc Leepson reviews MTAM
The following review appeared in the April 2009 issue of The VVA Veteran:
“More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam (Modern History Press, 221 pp., $21.95, paper) is an anthology of essays, stories, and poems by fifteen Vietnam veterans. There is a wide range of material here, all well worth reading. That includes an excellent essay, “Whatever You Did in War Will Always Be With You,” on PTSD by writer Marc Levy, who also contributes two first-rate short stories. The other contributors include Don Bodey (the author of the novel F.N.G.), Alan Farrell, and Preston Hood.”
Be sure to visit our complete archive of More Than A Memory book reviews
Tyler Tichelaar, PhD reviews MTAM
March 24, 2009
More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam
Edited by Victor R. Volkman
Modern History Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781932690651 (hardcover) $34.95
9781932690644 (paperback) $21.95
“More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam” is a stunning anthology of writings by veterans that includes first-person non-fiction narratives of serving in Vietnam, fictional stories about the war, poetry, tales of adjusting to civilian life after the war, and many memories of the war and how it continues to affect veterans’ lives today. The diversity of “More Than a Memory” provides a more thorough understanding of the war experience than any one soldier’s story could provide. Twelve authors have contributed forty-five different pieces of Vietnam war literature that leave a reader both shocked, grieving for the veterans’ experiences, and better educated about what war does to an individual and a nation.
It is impossible to discuss the merits of all the works included in this anthology. Many of the stories are what the reader might expect—depictions of veterans experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder upon their return home, veterans trying to understand what it meant to have to kill other people, soldiers coping with the loss of comrades in battle, and soldiers returning home to a nation that failed to treat them with respect. In addition are many unexpected themes that add to a fuller understanding of the Vietnam War and how war haunts a person for the rest of his life. If the book is lacking in any way, it is the absence of women explaining how the war also haunted “her” life as a soldier or soldier’s wife, but that is a small complaint compared to the multiple voices in this volume.
(more…)
The Beast – Doc Rich Raitano
The Beast
It is always waiting
In the darkest corners
Of your life,
Still and silent;
Hungry and demanding.
Do not look upon it.
Do not seek its eyes,
Prepare yourself
For struggle.
Keep faint
The beating of your heart;
Still the quickness of your breath.
It waits there
Beyond your reach
With sharpened tooth
And deadly claw.
Step into its lair unprepared
And you will become
Shattered bone
And shredded flesh.
Doc Rich R
2008
Richard Boes – Above The Line
Richard Boes (R.I.P.)
This just in from Marc Levy:
Regret to inform you that Richard Boes, whose work opens More Than A Memory: Reflections of Vietnam passed away on 21 Feb 09.
________________________
Richard Boes died yesterday at the VA Hospital in Albany NY. Richard enlisted into the US Army and served in Vietnam in 1969 – 1970 with the First Air Cav. He is the author of two books, The Last Dead Soldier Left Alive (2007) a first hand inquiry into why thousands of Vietnam Veterans have committed suicide and Last Train Out (2008). Right up to his death Richard was writing a third, In the Valley of Dry Bones.
You can read Richard’s recollection “POW Remembered” which was published in the VVAW publication The Veteran in Fall 2004 (Vol. 34, No. 2)
________________________________________________
“Above the line I know enough to know I know nothing. Less is missing, no greater than the whole, hole I’m in, bullets, buttons, and apart from. I’m dumber than a stone like a crumpled page, blood for ink at the price of fleshy gooseflesh. It’s a beautiful day, yeah, but I only want out. A simple song, a clear view to the bottom, out from the glass. The water’s deep, wiggles and divides, I’m a stick in the mud, a new-found mind set. And the gold finch in a feeding frenzy smacks up against itself. All vanity is glass. There’s no one I’m looking for, but most likely Myles is dead like all us good soldiers.”
–Richard Boes, Last Train Out
Press Release
The Press Release has been posted on PRWeb for general distribution. A copy of the body text is below.
Veterans Recall Viet Nam in Diverse Poetry and Prose Anthology
Viet Nam shaped a generation, yet decades later, the soldiers’ experience remains difficult to grasp. Now fifteen veterans have collaborated in recalling, through poetry, fiction, and personal essays, their war experiences in “More Than a Memory.”
Ann Arbor, MI (PRWEB) February 23, 2009 — No book on Viet Nam has ever completely captured the experience of that war because no one can speak for every soldier. A new anthology resolves that limited viewpoint by capturing the diverse experiences of veterans in “More Than a Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam” (ISBN 9781932690644, Modern History Press, 2008). (more…)
Know them
Know them as tears fill their eyes at the sight of a child while memories repeat a vision of dead, militated, burnt children cast beside the road to Baghdad.
Know them as they smile while talking about their best friend dying.
Know them as you discover they sleep on the floor and run nightly patrols.
Know them as a slight disagreement explodes into a killing rage and the vet is stepping backwards seeking his knives and guns.
Know them as they get and lose as many different jobs as they have years separated from the war.
Know them as they condemn themselves for the smallest mistake because in their world a mistake will kill someone.
Know them as they display anti-social and addictive behavior.
Know them as they struggle with borderline personality disorders and have extreme difficulties with interpersonal relationships.
Know them who suffer the pain as they pronounce that others deserve veterans benefits more than they do.
Know them as you ask when they fought a major battle and they say, “Last night.”
Know them as they walk in the woods while keeping a proper spacing between people they are with and constantly registering the next closest spot for cover and concealment.
Know them as they drive white knuckled, holding back the urge to “SHOUT,SHOW,AND SHOOT” at the driver who gets too close on the highway and fight the desire to swerve away from anything that might contain an IED
Know them as they travel across six states to help a friend but they would not cross the street to save their own ass.
Know them as they will not come to you for help. They are to proud.
Know them as you would your own. Provide for them for the rest of their lives the mental, medical and social tools that reflect our ability to honor the veteran.
Know them.
Poem by Tom Skiens, with shout, show and shoot line by two tour
Afghanistan vet James Dowmen
Levy, Skiens, Swindell interviewed on ISL
On February 12th, 2009, Juanita Watson of Inside Scoop Live interviewed Tommy Skiens, Marc Levy, Tony Swindell, and Victor R. Volkman (Sr. Editor, Modern History Press) about their new anthology More Than A Memory: Reflections of Viet Nam. This 45-minute interview covered a wide range of topics from the power of creative writing to free the soul to the role of warfare in a modern society.
You can Download the MP3 file 
or click on the audio-player bar below to listen immediately.