From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Review - Brief Article

When it does not tend toward the maudlin, war poetry often explores politically troublesome and artistically dubious tuff. That's why it came as such a pleasant surprise that the finest poetry anthology of 1998 was From Both Sides Now: The Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (Scribner, 1998). Edited by Philip Mahony, an adjunct teacher of poetry at New York University and a seventeen-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, From Both Sides Now gathers Western poets--Grace Paley, Allen Ginsberg, Margaret Atwood, Denise Levertov, and W.S. Merwin--and the unknown Vietnamese orphans, soldiers, widows, and priests into a vibrant chorus of voices.

Mahony's anthology takes on something of a narrative character as it traces the great events of the war in poems from divergent perspectives. Le Dan's "Child of My Lai" shares the common language of experience with...