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Scream Wounds: How to Kill Your First Man in War
A "scream wound" is a wound from which even the most hardened combat soldier cannot help but scream from the pain. As such, it becomes a metaphor for the entire Vietnam War. It still brings us pain. Many of us, including myself, have our personal scream wounds. Mine are the friends I lost in the War. Some of that is based on feelings of guilt that I have been able to live such an interesting life while they died so young in combat.
Almost all of the poems in this book are based on the accounts I was able to glean from other veterans. Most of the works are about Vietnam, some are about experiences of veterans back in the United States, and one is about Iraq. I have tried to honor the basic truths and capture the individual details that history books often ignore. I felt I was saving stories that would be forever lost if I did not write them down.
Almost all of the poems in this book are based on the accounts I was able to glean from other veterans. Most of the works are about Vietnam, some are about experiences of veterans back in the United States, and one is about Iraq. I have tried to honor the basic truths and capture the individual details that history books often ignore. I felt I was saving stories that would be forever lost if I did not write them down.
61 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
About the author
Jimmy Pappas
6 books254 followersJimmy Pappas served during the Vietnam War as an English language instructor training South Vietnamese soldiers. He received a BA in English at Bridgewater State University and an MA in English literature from Rivier University. His poems have been published in over 100 journals, including Sheila-Na-Gig, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Off the Coast, and Boston Literary Magazine. The poem "Bobby's Story" was one of ten finalists in the 2017 Rattle Poetry Contest and won the 2018 Readers Choice Award. Other poems about veterans are included in Jimmy's first book Scream Wounds published by A15 Press in 2019. Jimmy won the Rattle chapbook prize in 2019 for Falling off the Empire State Building. Jimmy now moderates a weekly Zoom event called A Conversation with Jimmy and Friends.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 17, 2021
I have never been a member of the armed services. The draft during the Vietnam era ended just before my number came up. So I had no experience base from which to understand or relate to these poems. That didn't present a problem. These poems are that good.
If you are in a similar situation, please read this book. In a manner that manages to be incisive, heartwarming, terrifying, angering and engaging all at once, Pappas helps us understand the reality of war - the reality as seen from a place under the skin, so to speak.
The very first poem, How To Kill Your First Man In War, starts off with a gut punch. The poem rationally, and in a seemingly instructional manner, goes through various body parts which serve as potential targets. Quickly though, the way these potential targets are discussed ensures that the humanity of the victim is first and foremost in the killer's mind. It is said that the only way this killing is possible for many soldiers is if they can stop thinking of the enemy as a human being. This poem jerks the humanity of the enemy right back into the center of view. At the end of the poem, the reader is pushed right off a cliff, and is forced to grapple with what s/he is left to consider. Powerful stuff.
Bobby's Story, an award-winning poem brings into sharp relief the realities and perils of PTSD, and the inadequacy of the services offered to treat this condition.
The title poem brings the reality home. Explanation is given that "scream wounds" are wounds that make the most hardened, toughest soldiers scream out in pain. These wounds are important because they can reveal the location of other hidden soldiers and make an ambush effective. It was wise to choose this poem's title as the title of the book. It conveys the horror of what you are reading about in a way that no other title could.
Com Doc tells about war from the perspective of a combat physician. The poem ends with an arresting stanza:
"Real veterans
know the truth
about war,
that there is no cure
for this disease."
Balloon Man is a brilliant use of simile and irony to describe the injuries of a wounded pilot by a darkly comedic characterization as a broken marionette. Then, just to make sure the reader fully gets the message, Pappas follows with a short, devastating poem called Jigsaw Man. The title gives you everything you need to understand what it's like trying to find all the parts of a fellow soldier who was the victim of an explosion.
Throughout the book, Pappas uses a style of writing and communication that is true to his subject. There is no attempt at fluffy poeticization here. Any soldier would find the language familiar and would be at home. It's damned effective. This is a book that could have only been written by someone with considerable talent, but who also was actually there. Again, if you are like me, read it. If you are a veteran or a soldier, or actually were in Vietnam, read it. It may help. It's worth the time.
If you are in a similar situation, please read this book. In a manner that manages to be incisive, heartwarming, terrifying, angering and engaging all at once, Pappas helps us understand the reality of war - the reality as seen from a place under the skin, so to speak.
The very first poem, How To Kill Your First Man In War, starts off with a gut punch. The poem rationally, and in a seemingly instructional manner, goes through various body parts which serve as potential targets. Quickly though, the way these potential targets are discussed ensures that the humanity of the victim is first and foremost in the killer's mind. It is said that the only way this killing is possible for many soldiers is if they can stop thinking of the enemy as a human being. This poem jerks the humanity of the enemy right back into the center of view. At the end of the poem, the reader is pushed right off a cliff, and is forced to grapple with what s/he is left to consider. Powerful stuff.
Bobby's Story, an award-winning poem brings into sharp relief the realities and perils of PTSD, and the inadequacy of the services offered to treat this condition.
The title poem brings the reality home. Explanation is given that "scream wounds" are wounds that make the most hardened, toughest soldiers scream out in pain. These wounds are important because they can reveal the location of other hidden soldiers and make an ambush effective. It was wise to choose this poem's title as the title of the book. It conveys the horror of what you are reading about in a way that no other title could.
Com Doc tells about war from the perspective of a combat physician. The poem ends with an arresting stanza:
"Real veterans
know the truth
about war,
that there is no cure
for this disease."
Balloon Man is a brilliant use of simile and irony to describe the injuries of a wounded pilot by a darkly comedic characterization as a broken marionette. Then, just to make sure the reader fully gets the message, Pappas follows with a short, devastating poem called Jigsaw Man. The title gives you everything you need to understand what it's like trying to find all the parts of a fellow soldier who was the victim of an explosion.
Throughout the book, Pappas uses a style of writing and communication that is true to his subject. There is no attempt at fluffy poeticization here. Any soldier would find the language familiar and would be at home. It's damned effective. This is a book that could have only been written by someone with considerable talent, but who also was actually there. Again, if you are like me, read it. If you are a veteran or a soldier, or actually were in Vietnam, read it. It may help. It's worth the time.
October 3, 2019
Jimmy Pappas tells us that a scream wound is “one from which even the most hardened combat soldier cannot help but cry out in pain.” He uses the phrase as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, and for many of us, that metaphor extends to today. Most of the poems come from stories veterans told Pappas over the years. These are stories that need to be told, although it could not have been easy for Jimmy to hear them and synthesize them into poems.
“Bobby’s Story,” which was a finalist for the Rattle poetry prize, won the Rattle Reader’s Choice Award in 2018. Bobby was a member of the same Vietnam veterans’ group as Pappas, and Pappas has fulfilled the promise he made shortly before Bobby died: “I’m going to make you famous in a poem.” And what a poem! Pappas draws a picture of Bobby by including comments from other vets, as well as vignettes Bobby shared over the years of their friendship.
Pappas does not romaticize war. His sometimes stark, always matter-of-fact descriptions offer no attempt to glamorize or “pretty-up” the experience of serving during war time. In “Jigsaw Man,” the reader gets a glimpse of reality:
My father taught me to start with the corners,
so I looked for his elbows and knees.
Although the poem is about a plane crash at Edwards Air Force Base, it certainly also captures the mantra of the American forces: leave nobody behind.
I believe the final stanza of “Com Doc” is spot-on, and for me, it is the underlying theme of this collection:
Real veterans
know the truth
about war,
that there is no cure
for this disease.
“Bobby’s Story,” which was a finalist for the Rattle poetry prize, won the Rattle Reader’s Choice Award in 2018. Bobby was a member of the same Vietnam veterans’ group as Pappas, and Pappas has fulfilled the promise he made shortly before Bobby died: “I’m going to make you famous in a poem.” And what a poem! Pappas draws a picture of Bobby by including comments from other vets, as well as vignettes Bobby shared over the years of their friendship.
Pappas does not romaticize war. His sometimes stark, always matter-of-fact descriptions offer no attempt to glamorize or “pretty-up” the experience of serving during war time. In “Jigsaw Man,” the reader gets a glimpse of reality:
My father taught me to start with the corners,
so I looked for his elbows and knees.
Although the poem is about a plane crash at Edwards Air Force Base, it certainly also captures the mantra of the American forces: leave nobody behind.
I believe the final stanza of “Com Doc” is spot-on, and for me, it is the underlying theme of this collection:
Real veterans
know the truth
about war,
that there is no cure
for this disease.
Read
April 14, 2020I wrote this book in an effort to save some of the stories of war that I heard from veterans, especially from Vietnam. It is the individual stories that take war to a place beyond most history books. I wanted to save them for future readers. War can bring out so much in human beings.
Here is a link to "Bobby's Story" which won the 2018 Readers Choice Award at Rattle. It is a special piece for me because I promised Bobby before he died that I would make him famous in a poem. And somehow I did it. Who we are is defined by three things: 1. What we do, 2. What we say, and 3. What other people say about us:
https://www.rattle.com/bobbys-story-b...
Here is the background information to "Bobby's Story":
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/...
Here is a link to "Bobby's Story" which won the 2018 Readers Choice Award at Rattle. It is a special piece for me because I promised Bobby before he died that I would make him famous in a poem. And somehow I did it. Who we are is defined by three things: 1. What we do, 2. What we say, and 3. What other people say about us:
https://www.rattle.com/bobbys-story-b...
Here is the background information to "Bobby's Story":
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/...
September 17, 2019
Though slim and easily read in a single sitting, Jimmy Pappas's poetry collection Scream Wounds: How to Kill Your First Man In War is densely packed with nearly 30 narrative poems, each relating heavy-hitting recollections and tales of real-life Vietnam War veterans. Pappas, himself a Vietnam vet (he served in the Air Force as an English-language instructor in Saigon teaching South Vietnamese soldiers) and a member of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 992, has spent decades intently listening to the words of those who served. Here he has given them a voice.
"I have tried to honor the basic truths and capture the individual details that history books often ignore," states Pappas on the book's back cover. "I felt I was saving stories that would be forever lost if I did not write them down."
And to that effect, Scream Wounds is a success. While reading these poems, I couldn't help but think of the first time I read Raegan Butcher's poetry collection, Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison . Obviously, thematically, there are major differences between the books; however, the collections are very similar on two points. First, they each contain narrative poems that tell first-hand accounts of lives lived in hellish circumstances (in war and in prison, respectively) foreign to the vast majority of people; second, the poems in each collection are extremely candid and straightforward.
It is thanks to this restrained style that the narratives of each poem carry so much weight. Rather than imparting any perceived authorial slant or bias, each poem simply shouts, "This is how it was in the war/behind bars, and this is how I dealt with it or still deal with it." There is no room for bullshit here, and in the case of the veterans to whom Pappas gives voice, you have to take them at face value and make your own judgments, because Pappas does not tell you, the reader, how you should feel about them. He does not distinguish between heel and hero, nor does he wax poetic on the underlying morality (or lack thereof) that led the United States to partake in the Vietnam War. Scream Wounds is not an indictment nor a celebration of the Vietnam War; rather, it is a study of war in general and of human nature from the point of view of a sampling of Americans who happened to be in that war.
Futility? Regret? Fear? Pride? Sure, you will find those emotions and others in droves here, not because Jimmy tells you so, but because you can practically hear those feelings dripping from the voices in the poems, some booming, some shaky, some flat and dead. In this book you hear from and learn about otherwise forgotten men whose names are not etched in stone on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, yet still seem to have not been able to fully leave Vietnam.
There is Bobby, a tragic man who once survived on mashed spiders and centipedes in the jungle and returned to America to become morbidly obese, vainly using food to temper severe emotional wounds that never healed. Jim tells how he was accepted into the Army despite having permanent brain damage, sustained during an accident as a child, and how he had to fight new battles in the years since the war just to receive his pension and disability checks. Larry tells his war story in great detail, and interestingly confesses to repeatedly embellishing his roles and actions when discussing Vietnam. Conversely, there is the anonymous narrator of "I Ask a Veteran to Help Me Write a Poem" who refuses to tell any war stories for fear of "pretending to be some sort of hero," and that it might put "pressure on the next generation of young men who feel the need to be worthy of your respect."
To me, these two vastly different approaches to discussing (or not discussing) the war are interesting, because though they seem quite different, they are entirely expected and may, perhaps, serve a similar function. Back in 2002, when I took part in an interview with author Tim O'Brien, he discussed the "romanticizing" of Vietnam by some veterans who "look back on it as more heroic, and with nostalgia," and certainly, many people will encounter veterans of any number of wars (pick a war, any war, this is America, after all) who romanticize or embellish. But you are equally as likely to meet a veteran who buttons his/her lips at any mention of war, or any inquiry, whether pointed or vague. Is it because the subject is too traumatizing? Is it because, as the narrator of the aforementioned poem professes, that discussing experiences in war glamorizes it and "puts pressure on the next generation [of servicemen/women]" regardless of context? Is it because shutting down discussion and being cryptic adds intrigue to the veteran, the brotherhood of veterans, and the wars they fought? And isn't this, like romanticizing and embellishment, just another form of tantalizing those who haven't been in war?
I pose this thought because of the futility of the theory of the narrator of "I Ask a Veteran to Help Me Write a Poem" -- he is obviously in the right when he explains his feelings on war, his sympathy for gold star parents, the fact that he should not be obligated to relive his tortured past.
But then he states,
"You know, my son went to Iraq.
Now what if he went there because
he wanted to impress his father?
How would I feel if he died there?"
When reading this, my stunned reaction was, "Does it matter why he went there? Didn't he go there to fight in yet another part of the world the US has no business invading despite your unwillingness to discuss the past? Isn't this proof that keeping quiet is futile? Wouldn't his death hit you just as hard whether he was trying to impress you or not? Isn't death death regardless of context?"
I happen to think there is much truth in the maxim, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The narrator of the poem misses this mark; however, I still appreciate the poem for its honesty, and for the reaction it provoked in me.
In my opinion, Scream Wounds should sit on the shelf alongside such Vietnam classics as Michael Herr's Dispatches. Funnily enough, a quick glance at the Goodreads page for that book shows Pappas himself stating, "I got the feeling Mr. Herr was just looking for quirky quotes to make soldiers look like fruit loops or, worse, psychotic killers. He totally missed anything about the other sides of their personalities. I have been around enough veterans to know that other side exists. I pictured him rushing off to a pen and paper every time he heard someone say something unusual and ignored any talk about, oh I don't know, maybe girlfriends?"
In Scream Wounds, Pappas has done just that -- maybe there are no poems about "girlfriends" here, but he has exposed the human side and the personalities of a small cast of characters from the Vietnam War. To be fair to Herr, Jimmy has had time on his side; there is an advantage to collecting stories over a period of many years, long after the war's end, when both the author and the subjects have had time to reflect. Herr cataloged the ugliness of war during the war; he wrote about the crazy shit he saw and heard as it was happening. And there was a huge amount of ugliness to cover. Maybe he focused on that side too much; however, it's important to acknowledge it. I'm glad he did. I wish I could say that his effort to expose the brutality of war had curtailed America's thirst for war in the intervening years; it has not.
Pappas's next effort, Falling Off the Empire State Building, is due out in 2020, and it does not appear to be military- or war-themed. However, I cannot help but feel that his task of bringing to light the forgotten stories of the Vietnam War is yet unfinished. Personally, I would love a second collection of stories or prose poems detailing his and only his recollections of Vietnam, as I am intrigued by both his unique duty as an English teacher in Vietnam and the day-to-day minutia of a young, sympathetic American living abroad in a warzone. And I know this is a long-shot, but as a companion piece to Scream Wounds, I would love to see a second poetry collection that gives voice to South Vietnamese civilians or military, to hear their take.
I realize that this is not too likely, and perhaps unrealistic, but the idea struck me when I read the poem entitled, "The Combat Veteran and the Vietnamese Refugees," wherein the narrator of the poem relates a story of meeting a family of Vietnamese refugees in an American supermarket, several years after the war's conclusion. He breaks down and cries when attempting to speak to them, apologizing "for not doing more to help their country." They offer him comfort and spiritual solace, and it is a nice story, a nice poem. But I can't help but to want to hear from that family or others like them too. Perhaps someday their stories will be told; perhaps they already have and I'm just not aware of it.
Whether or not you usually read poetry and/or war literature, I highly suggest that you pick up Scream Wounds. It's a bargain for the cover price, and priceless for the stories that it has saved from being lost to time.
"I have tried to honor the basic truths and capture the individual details that history books often ignore," states Pappas on the book's back cover. "I felt I was saving stories that would be forever lost if I did not write them down."
And to that effect, Scream Wounds is a success. While reading these poems, I couldn't help but think of the first time I read Raegan Butcher's poetry collection, Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison . Obviously, thematically, there are major differences between the books; however, the collections are very similar on two points. First, they each contain narrative poems that tell first-hand accounts of lives lived in hellish circumstances (in war and in prison, respectively) foreign to the vast majority of people; second, the poems in each collection are extremely candid and straightforward.
It is thanks to this restrained style that the narratives of each poem carry so much weight. Rather than imparting any perceived authorial slant or bias, each poem simply shouts, "This is how it was in the war/behind bars, and this is how I dealt with it or still deal with it." There is no room for bullshit here, and in the case of the veterans to whom Pappas gives voice, you have to take them at face value and make your own judgments, because Pappas does not tell you, the reader, how you should feel about them. He does not distinguish between heel and hero, nor does he wax poetic on the underlying morality (or lack thereof) that led the United States to partake in the Vietnam War. Scream Wounds is not an indictment nor a celebration of the Vietnam War; rather, it is a study of war in general and of human nature from the point of view of a sampling of Americans who happened to be in that war.
Futility? Regret? Fear? Pride? Sure, you will find those emotions and others in droves here, not because Jimmy tells you so, but because you can practically hear those feelings dripping from the voices in the poems, some booming, some shaky, some flat and dead. In this book you hear from and learn about otherwise forgotten men whose names are not etched in stone on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, yet still seem to have not been able to fully leave Vietnam.
There is Bobby, a tragic man who once survived on mashed spiders and centipedes in the jungle and returned to America to become morbidly obese, vainly using food to temper severe emotional wounds that never healed. Jim tells how he was accepted into the Army despite having permanent brain damage, sustained during an accident as a child, and how he had to fight new battles in the years since the war just to receive his pension and disability checks. Larry tells his war story in great detail, and interestingly confesses to repeatedly embellishing his roles and actions when discussing Vietnam. Conversely, there is the anonymous narrator of "I Ask a Veteran to Help Me Write a Poem" who refuses to tell any war stories for fear of "pretending to be some sort of hero," and that it might put "pressure on the next generation of young men who feel the need to be worthy of your respect."
To me, these two vastly different approaches to discussing (or not discussing) the war are interesting, because though they seem quite different, they are entirely expected and may, perhaps, serve a similar function. Back in 2002, when I took part in an interview with author Tim O'Brien, he discussed the "romanticizing" of Vietnam by some veterans who "look back on it as more heroic, and with nostalgia," and certainly, many people will encounter veterans of any number of wars (pick a war, any war, this is America, after all) who romanticize or embellish. But you are equally as likely to meet a veteran who buttons his/her lips at any mention of war, or any inquiry, whether pointed or vague. Is it because the subject is too traumatizing? Is it because, as the narrator of the aforementioned poem professes, that discussing experiences in war glamorizes it and "puts pressure on the next generation [of servicemen/women]" regardless of context? Is it because shutting down discussion and being cryptic adds intrigue to the veteran, the brotherhood of veterans, and the wars they fought? And isn't this, like romanticizing and embellishment, just another form of tantalizing those who haven't been in war?
I pose this thought because of the futility of the theory of the narrator of "I Ask a Veteran to Help Me Write a Poem" -- he is obviously in the right when he explains his feelings on war, his sympathy for gold star parents, the fact that he should not be obligated to relive his tortured past.
But then he states,
"You know, my son went to Iraq.
Now what if he went there because
he wanted to impress his father?
How would I feel if he died there?"
When reading this, my stunned reaction was, "Does it matter why he went there? Didn't he go there to fight in yet another part of the world the US has no business invading despite your unwillingness to discuss the past? Isn't this proof that keeping quiet is futile? Wouldn't his death hit you just as hard whether he was trying to impress you or not? Isn't death death regardless of context?"
I happen to think there is much truth in the maxim, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The narrator of the poem misses this mark; however, I still appreciate the poem for its honesty, and for the reaction it provoked in me.
In my opinion, Scream Wounds should sit on the shelf alongside such Vietnam classics as Michael Herr's Dispatches. Funnily enough, a quick glance at the Goodreads page for that book shows Pappas himself stating, "I got the feeling Mr. Herr was just looking for quirky quotes to make soldiers look like fruit loops or, worse, psychotic killers. He totally missed anything about the other sides of their personalities. I have been around enough veterans to know that other side exists. I pictured him rushing off to a pen and paper every time he heard someone say something unusual and ignored any talk about, oh I don't know, maybe girlfriends?"
In Scream Wounds, Pappas has done just that -- maybe there are no poems about "girlfriends" here, but he has exposed the human side and the personalities of a small cast of characters from the Vietnam War. To be fair to Herr, Jimmy has had time on his side; there is an advantage to collecting stories over a period of many years, long after the war's end, when both the author and the subjects have had time to reflect. Herr cataloged the ugliness of war during the war; he wrote about the crazy shit he saw and heard as it was happening. And there was a huge amount of ugliness to cover. Maybe he focused on that side too much; however, it's important to acknowledge it. I'm glad he did. I wish I could say that his effort to expose the brutality of war had curtailed America's thirst for war in the intervening years; it has not.
Pappas's next effort, Falling Off the Empire State Building, is due out in 2020, and it does not appear to be military- or war-themed. However, I cannot help but feel that his task of bringing to light the forgotten stories of the Vietnam War is yet unfinished. Personally, I would love a second collection of stories or prose poems detailing his and only his recollections of Vietnam, as I am intrigued by both his unique duty as an English teacher in Vietnam and the day-to-day minutia of a young, sympathetic American living abroad in a warzone. And I know this is a long-shot, but as a companion piece to Scream Wounds, I would love to see a second poetry collection that gives voice to South Vietnamese civilians or military, to hear their take.
I realize that this is not too likely, and perhaps unrealistic, but the idea struck me when I read the poem entitled, "The Combat Veteran and the Vietnamese Refugees," wherein the narrator of the poem relates a story of meeting a family of Vietnamese refugees in an American supermarket, several years after the war's conclusion. He breaks down and cries when attempting to speak to them, apologizing "for not doing more to help their country." They offer him comfort and spiritual solace, and it is a nice story, a nice poem. But I can't help but to want to hear from that family or others like them too. Perhaps someday their stories will be told; perhaps they already have and I'm just not aware of it.
Whether or not you usually read poetry and/or war literature, I highly suggest that you pick up Scream Wounds. It's a bargain for the cover price, and priceless for the stories that it has saved from being lost to time.
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