soldatesque : soldiering by anne waldman and noah saterstrom book preview

7/31/2019 Soldatesque : Soldiering by Anne Waldman and Noah Saterstrom Book Preview

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Anne Waldman & Noah Saterstrom

Soldatesque / Soldieringwith Dreams of Wartime

with an introduction by Bill Berkson


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Soldatesque / Soldiering by Anne Waldman and Noah Saterstrom

Copyright 2011

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced withoutthe publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Kristen Nelson

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-60964-076-7Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913244

BlazeVOX [books]76 Inwood PlaceBuffalo, NY 14209

[email protected]

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publisher of weird little books

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Soldier, Rest ....................................................................... 7

Soldatesque / Soldiering ......................................................................... 11

Dreams of Wartime ...................................................................................47

Project Descriptions ................................................................................. 59

Biographies ................................................................................................ 61

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. 65


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S/S 7

There is no love interest in these modern wars. Gertrude Stein, 1943

The WarA handsome young Viet Namese guy from Burlington, Vermont

Just now got it in the neck.Philip Whalen, 1966

Although Anne Waldman and I were born almost six years apart, our wars have been

pretty much the same: World War II (German troops moving into Poland the night I

was born), U.S. police action in Korea (my politicalization, such as it was, started

there and with the Army-McCarthy Hearings on TV), and Vietnam (one of my earli-est encounters with Anne was on a Fifth Avenue anti-war march). When was the last

victory cheer?

The conicts of our grown-up years from Southeast Asia on have been beyond ab-

surd; the news brings only that familiar, weighty lump in the throat over some statisti-

cal or pictured dead kid, or missing limbs, a psyche displaced. Its said that the moreexamples you show of suffering the smaller the impact. One sad case is tops. The

casualty list looks blank unless youre searching for a name.

As I write this, Anne adds a codicil: Post Traumatic Stress is a good angleI feel

were all suffering it. In Gertrude Steins Brewsie and Willie, Willie says, If you ght a

war good enough everybody ought to get killed. A little later Brewsie says, Oh dear, I guessyou boys better go away, I might just begin to cry and I better be alone. I am a G.I. and perhaps

we better all cry, it might do us good crying sometimes does.

Ted Berrigan said he heard a gunshot in the night in Korea, outside the base. Ken-

neth Koch lost his glasses in a foxhole somewhere in the Pacic, bullets whizzing.

Killer Kenneth. Frank OHara stood on the deck of the USS Nicholas, spotting en-

emy planes, horried that he might be the cause of the next great Japanese composers

Soldier, Rest


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going down in ames. Robert Creeley drove an ambulance through Burma. What

happens when poets go to war, as they will, but nowadays rarely? (Some mystery in

that.) War is shit, wrote Ted in one of his Vietnam-vintage poems. Some of us are just

perpetual observers, like Tolstoys Pierre threading through the remains at Borodino.

For those who were in it, varying degrees of persistent horror seem inexorable: war

torn, battle fatigue, shell shock, and the now clinically approved PTSD. (A bel-

lyful of scare quotes there.) OHara went on to Harvard and wrote an attempted exor-

cism, Lament and Chastisement, its nale choir screeching like out of a bad dream.

Poets and painters have a high command. Anne Waldmans texts here try, as one pe-

riodically must, to gure it outwhats with all this war in perpetuity, anyway? And

Noah Saterstroms pictures shiver with the look of an observerhood, on-the-spot em-

bedded.Neither Anne nor Noah (now in his thirties) has ever been in an army, and

neither have I. Fat chance of that. Our love interests lie elsewhere. When in the middleof the Cold War I told my father I wouldnt join no matter what, he called me a pi-

geon for the Reds. Nevertheless, we have rage, aggression, defense mechanisms, a

taste for revenge, inordinate cruelty, appalling as all those may be, as well as resent-

ment, pride and shame. I remember a poet friend in 1967 or so telling me he was going

to join the armybecause, he said, I need to kill someone.

Is that a real soldier, fuck or ght? The professionalcommander or hopliteis one

thing. My uncle Kent the career cavalryman, rode horses in WWI and tanks in WWII. In

the latter, on George Pattons staff in North Africa, Sicily and onwarda disreputable

association that left him shunted at wars end, his last years as colonel-commandant

of the dress post Governors Island. His daughter, my ninety-three-year-old cousin,

says he was generally naughty. Lean, elegant, persuasive, sporting a neatly trimmed

mustache, a lightning-bolt Armored-Division patch on one sleeve of his uniform jack-

et, he was the closest I ever got to a military life.

John Keegans A History of Warfare reads like a biosketch of collateral humankind. But

strangely omitted is the sense of how soldiering ts in with the everyday economy. Atthe Selective Service Induction Center in Lower Manhattan, 1960, I overheard people

my age eager to get in, get the job. Hope he doesnt spot my trick knee. Growing up


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S/S 9

absurd, with no higher prospect. I on the other hand wanted out; ambitious to avoid,

certied 4F by a seemingly Viennese migr camp psychiatrist, psyched, watching my

hands shake when he told me to hold them out. The desk sergeant gave me a lunch

ticket for the mess hall; an hour later I sat drinking vodka at Franks place, wondering

if I had missed out on some crucial experience.

Fuck or ght? Limbs of the body in sync with objects of death. Walter Reed is closing, the

troops may well be pulling out, but the drones keep ying. Here on the home front

Annes and Noahs word-and-image frieze blossoms like a immensely consideratedevice improvised for those Gentle Reader hands remaining.

Bill Berkson


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Soldatesque

/So

ldierin

g


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S/S 12

She wanted to be a soldier. She wanted to soldier and soldier her way through it.What was it. It was a gesture. Une geste. Paleolithic hunter in the tundra perhaps.

Imagine the costume: Paleolithic hunter in the tundra. Chausseur palolithique dansle toundra.

It would be getting cold wherever that war was when you imagine it, or it wouldbe too hot. Errorism is hot. You wait for another cold war. Inside your head is hot.She wanted to soldier.

Speech de clture dans un thtre de guerre.

S

oldatesque

/S

oldieri

ng


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S/S 13

You never know what drives a person Apparatus. To be within or without apparatus.

tre dans ou sans appareil.

You never know what drives a person. A place with ames is hell. Medical person-hood in a white coat appears as an angel. You are joining the fray. Exhausting analy-ses of the world drive you. You think soldiering would take you out of night, out ofconcept, out of signs, away from surface, away from a symbolic universe. Out thedoor. On to the empyreal line. Her symbolic sublimity.

And if you could serve, would you. And if you would die, would you.

A curvature in a uniform. A curtained speech in a theatre of war.


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S/S 14

Once out and compressed by others, others are seeing you differently. You want tolove others so many of them, all the inductees. Cant read you so many. Many cryp-tic ones. Is it ideological to notice if that were possible love would replace soldiering.Is it onerous to notice you are dwelling in potential soldierhood. Trained and tough-ened. Can you react in an interesting way to a scene in Beirut? Scene in the SwatValley? How far off are you in your body? How calibrated is the psyche, point of noreturn. How is a matter of counting materialized in moments of waiting, hemmed in,your breath is a giveaway. Delineation.

Share the breath of the enemy. Speech de clture dans un thtre de guerre.

One of your pals interested in oneiromancy.

Predict an outcome. Who returns. Pas arbitraire.


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S/S 15

Switch out. (Dconnecte)

Does it take you by surprise or is it economical to imagine this? Does it take youhaving a particular personality or is it emotional to notice this?

Soldiering. She wanted to soldier.

What?

This word: stoical.

This word: soldieral.

The word sidereal.

Try not to kill anyone, my soldier.


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S/S 16

Do you care? Est-ce que a te soucie? Does it take you it, a city, it, a place youhave to depend on, it, a job as others might into arms.

She wanted to soldier, needing some action for her arms.

Lift up this heavy machine. You are post-industrial.

And dollars. La lumire meraude.

You hey you. Turn it, the weapon, the other way around. Toward the sky.She got on a bus she got on a plane she got on a boat she got on a convoy, joining others.


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S/S 17

Start again. She got on a convoy she got on a scooter she got on a bike she walkedshe got on a train. She got in a Humvee.

Then walked. She joined others. Walking tracking obeying with other bodies.

Hey, you. Write your name here. I cant read you.

Est-ce que a te soucie?

Essaie de ne tuer personne mon soldat.


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S/S 18

Apparatus is a tough assignment. Cant read you. You are either in or off the mark.Above or below the mark. It is a non-human agency: apparatus. A non-human ges-ture is an apparatus. She wanted to soldier to embrace apparatus or so she thought

but others who saw differently might convince you of a different approach. Lookthere a sunset. A different approach. At the childs birth, her own, she was told,there were miracles. And there would be some hope for an other who would enter aworld beyond apparatus. An arbitrary program is an apparatus. How dull! But shecould be a miracle. Hopes pinned to the uniform.

What is a desire to enter a path like soldiering feel like?

Not arbitrary.

Necessity is at the gate. Est-ce que a te soucie?

soldatesque : soldiering by anne waldman and noah saterstrom book preview

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