Slow War

Benjamin Hertwig

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780773551763
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

Benjamin Hertwig's debut collection of poetry, Slow War, is at once an account of contemporary warfare and a personal journey of loss and the search for healing. It stands in the tradition of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and Kevin Powers's "Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting." A century after the First World War, Hertwig presents both the personal cost of war in poems such as "Somewhere in Flanders/Afghanistan" and "Food Habits of Coyotes, as Determined by Examination of Stomach Contents, " and the potential for healing in unlikely places in "A Poem Is Not Guantánamo Bay." This collection provides no easy answers – Hertwig looks at the war in Afghanistan with the unflinching gaze of a soldier and the sustained attention of a poet. In his accounting of warfare and its difficult aftermath on the homefront, the personal becomes political. While these poems inhabit both experimental and traditional forms, the breakdown of language channels a descent into violence and an ascent into a future that no longer feels certain, where history and trauma are forever intertwined. Hertwig reminds us that remembering war is a political act and that writing about war is a way we remember.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• genesis
• first kill
• bush trails
• weekend leave, Wainright to Edmonton
• drunk-driving
• emergent
• night convoy, Kandahar
• rumours, forward operating base Wilson
• guard tower, Kandahar
• ash wednesday, freedom chapel Kandahar
• salat
• first shot
• somewhere in Helmand
• three weeks’ leave, Germany
• rooftop, Panjwai
• somewhere in the desert
• evening at a burnt-out school with the tenth mountain division
• skoal
• easter sunday, forward operating base Wilson
• fruit on a wooden table
• a visit from the prime minister
• care package, Kandahar
• homeward
• iconoclast
• food habits of coyotes, as determined by examination of stomach contents
• tinnitus, or the drive-thru window when you return
• vehicle in flame
• young soldier
• young boy
• home again
• apple-picking, after Afghanistan
• winter buck
• alternate
• desire in sevens
• a compendium of hands
• july 22, 2006
• portrait of a family friend in your bedroom, signed camp Hallein (21/10/45)
• May 2, 2011
• the liturgical leap into monday, or some of the things you wish you’d told your grandfather
• rock picking
• road race, christmas day
• church going
• poem for the dead after war
• poem for the last time you wore your uniform
• Otto after the war
• somewhere in Flanders/Afghanistan
• stigmata
• for the soldier who slept across the hall
• on teaching Tim O’Brien to an amateur hockey team
• visiting the old farm, Alberta
• stories you tell when you wish to love again
• view from a slide you once slept under
• sunday mornings
• remember your body again
• quiet
• a poem is not Guantánamo Bay
• exodus
• Acknowledgments