Talking with Bill Wunder

Bill Wunder’s poems have twice been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and in 2004 he was named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His poems have been a finalist in The Robert Fraser Poetry Competition, The Mad Poet’s Society Competition twice, and The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards three times. Recently, his work has appeared in The Manhattan Review, Lips, The Paterson Literary Review, Mad Poet’s Review, Drexel University On-Line Journal, Wild River Review, and others. He has read or lectured in many venues, including local schools, James A. Michener Museum, Bucks County Community College, The Poetry Project at The Montgomery Theater and The Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series sponsored by the National Park Service. Via Dolorosa Press in Cleveland, Ohio published Bill’s chapbook titled A Season Of Storms. His book Pointing At the Moon is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications.

Tree Riesener, Managing Editor of the SVJ, recently interviewed Bill, who is the Featured Poet in the Fall, 2007 issue of The Schuylkill Valley Journal.

TR: I see in this selection of poems a population that reminds me of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milkwood, voices that together give us a feeling of some insight into the various figures who peopled your, or our, Vietnam. The young man enjoying life to the full, lured into leaving the town of his youth by a recruiter, the young man arriving in Vietnam, not yet sucked into that world but moving ever closer, and to his surprise seeing a waterskier and thinking, maybe, oh, war’s just going to be more running around and getting into a little trouble sometimes; another young man ensnared in a booby trap and making his graceful decision (I’m stepping out and may be gone some time), to the much older man sitting by the side of a dying loved one, seeing in that death all the deaths he has seen. Could you tell us something about the universality of your Vietnam experience, as a microcosm of a path often trod by, especially, young men, especially in light of the Iraq war?

BW: There is nothing universal in anyone’s war experience. And yet, if you change the names of the places, the dates, it’s all the same. The Iraq veterans someday will mourn lost comrades, lost limbs, lost innocence just as wistfully, and painfully as the Vietnam veterans. Up till the Iraq war, I thought we had all learned expensive lessons in what the Vietnamese call the American war. Sadly, we have learned little from history. Some wars are popular in the beginning, everyone wanting their piece of glory (read the Civil War, by Shelby Foote, since made into the Ken Burns/PBS series.) But they all end mired in bitterness, even if in victory. There is universal heartbreak in tallying body counts, whether they be friend, foe or collateral civilians. There is the universality of mourning on the homefront, at the cemetery, in the darkened living rooms. It should be universal for veterans to not allow their sons, and grandsons to go off to war.

TR: Wordsworth uttered those words that have become iconic, “emotion recollected in tranquillity.” Do these poems represent that--emotions filtered through the years or are you the Ancient Mariner whose heart within him burns to tell his story again?

BW: When I started writing the book, it was the former, and it has transitioned into the latter.

When I first came home in 1971, I wrote a long poem on a typewriter titled ”I Got Them ‘Ol Seventh Air Force Blues Again , Mama.” I never looked back until 2001, when I rewrote the poem and realized there was a whole book there for the writing. For the last 5 years, all I’ve written and worked on has been the book.

TR: Talk about Post Traumatic Stress Poetry. Have Vietnam veterans written poetry as part of a healing process or has poetry written by veterans been more, as the Chinese say when writing about injustice, as “speaking bitterness”?

BW: Well first, let me say I love the description “speaking bitterness.” The answer probably lies between the two. You’d have to read a lot of it to better formulate how much of each, and it would be different by the writer as well as the reader. Everyone talks about the writing of it, but far more people have been “healed” by reading, methinks.

TR: Have you finished with writing about Vietnam?

BW: Derek Walcott once said, “the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, despite its history.” I try to remember that when I set out to write a poem. I’m all done with Vietnam poetry, but fragments and references keep showing up in new poems. It’s like the war shadows me now that I’ve spent 5 years writing the book. It has changed me as a writer. I hope for the better.

TR: Are you aware of any soldier poets writing about Iraq? If so, what similarities and differences do you perceive in their work?

BW: I’ve recently read “Here, Bullet” by Brian Turner. This excellent book on the Iraq war won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award. When I finished, I remember thinking that if you changed the names of the natives, and the names of the places, you’d have trouble differentiating whether the poems happened in Iraq or Vietnam. What any good war poem does is give you a picture of the struggles a soldier or villager experiences and the de-humanizing effect that war has on everyone involved. If you read poems about the American civil war, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq there are many similarities.

TR: I am struck by your reliquary, your box of redolent objects in That Smile. In writing about these objects and photos, you seem almost to be writing ekphrastic poetry by slipping inside the piece. I was especially struck by That Smile and Girl in White Ao Dai, where you seem especially close to the girl in That Smile and to the soldier in Girl in White Ao Dai. Talk about how you write about objects and photos.

BW: Ekphrastic means literally the translation of one art form into another, so that is exactly what this poem is. I never knew the girl in the picture. And for thirty-five years I’ve wanted to. So finally, I had to write about what I imagined happened to her when Saigon fell. And the poem about the girl in a white ao dai dress, is the follow-up poem. So I guess the soldier watching her is me, although that wasn’t planned. I tend to use a lot of imagery in my poetry. The more clearly a reader “sees” through my eyes, the better they “get” the scene, “get” the poem. What I imagined happened to the girl is harsh, but then that’s war. I really hope she grew up differently from the poem, and had a nice, long life raising pigs and chickens in her village. Better yet, went to school, and became a doctor, saving lives, and is some small way help make up for our mistaken war.

TR: Talk about Thich Quang Duc, the circumstances of your writing this extraordinary poem.

BW: Thank you for the compliment. I always have been mesmerized by the picture of him just sitting there, seemingly at peace while he burns up, engulfed in a fireball. I cannot imagine the strength of will it must have taken. So it was a little like trying to write about 9/11 for me. Intimidating. I was hesitant, I wasn’t sure I could honor him with my writing. And if I couldn’t, I shouldn’t. This is also an ekphrastic poem. The strategy is to be almost cinematic with the imagery. What poetry has as a rough equivalent to scientific proof, is the vividness of the image. that’s what convinces a reader the speaker has really seen something, been there, etc.

TR: Have you ever considered what would be the effect on American attitudes toward the Iraq war if their suicide bombers, in the same spirit as Thich Quang Duc, killed only themselves? Do you consider such suicides to be effective pleas for peace or simply differently directed violence?

BW: Good question. Thich was protesting the Catholic government’s persecution of the Buddhists. When you throw in the differences of the religions involved, it becomes hard to analyze. But I feel the suicide bombers would have much more impact on public opinion if they were as courageous as Thich. Especially now, that they have resorted to remote bombs (IED.) One wonders if the insurgents have run out of heroes.

TR: What would you like said in your obituary about your Vietnam poetry?

BW: I plan on living forever, lol. I’d wish for one person to read my book, and decide to work for peace in this world.

TR: Finally, could you tell us about your writing process.

BW: I’m not sure I have one. When I am inspired by a picture, or a line in a song, etc., sometimes I start with a line, and off it goes, with a mind of its own. I’m never sure where the poem is headed. That said, after a first draft, then the work begins with compression, and course corrections and a whole lot of revising and editing. Then after some time has passed for perspective, I show them to my wife Camille, who possesses a world class eye and ear for poetry. And on it goes, until one day, years later, I mistakenly think the poem is finished.