Memories of a Lost War : American Poetic Responses to the Vietnam War

Memories of a Lost War is a unique study of poetry born of the Vietnam War, out of the trauma of rewritten history. The book analyses poems written by American veterans, protest poets, and Vietnamese, within political, aesthetic, and cultural contexts. It highlights the haunting, indeed, deliberately ignored presence of Vietnam in mainstream culture.

Memories of a Lost War is a study of poetry written primarily by Vietnam veterans during and after the war. Drawing on a wealth of material often published in small presses and journals, the book highlights the horrors of war and the continuing traumas of veterans in a post-Vietnam America that has largely rewritten the Vietnam war to suit dominant national ideologies. The analysis dwells on poems of solidarity wherein American veterans reach out to their former enemy. The concluding chapter on Vietnamese poems in translation extends the circle of memory and trauma. In its inclusion of Vietnamese perspectives Chattarji''s study marks a departure from earlier works that have largely concentrated on Vietnam as a war rather than as a country. This is a unique and significant addition to Vietnam studies and will be of interest to specialists in literature and culture studies, as well as those with a more general interest in the subject.