Thank You for Your Service

“Ehrhart’s Vietnam poems make a compelling argument against comfort, against apology, and against redemption….Ehrhart’s bleak beseechings have more in common with the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Stephen Crane than that of other Vietnam-era poets….Thank You for Your Service endures as a testament to truth-telling, the act of witness, and one ragged heart staying open after war, and for this, readers area should be grateful.”—The Rupture; “A hunger for honesty and a charged lyricism have always made Bill Ehrhart’s poetry remarkably his own. Though he’s best known for his Vietnam War poems with their sharp moral outcry and humane insight, Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems includes many lovely poems not about Vietnam. This book deserves serious recognition.”—John Balaban, poet-in-residence, North Carolina State University, author of Remembering Heaven’s Face; “Bill Ehrhart is the finest combat veteran poet to come out of the Vietnam War. But his poetry transcends his war experience and eloquently reveals the healing powers of family and love. In all of his written work, Bill is brutally honest in the revelation of his own and our society’s flaws and virtues. He is the master of sharing the most complex truths in seemingly simple language. He is a poet who will represent the important truths of our time for generations to come.”—Joseph T. Cox, Colonel, US Army, retired, author of The Written Wars; “Amazing, just amazing. Profound, powerful, startling. I’d be glad to be able to write these poems. I’m glad you can. And do. They’re really good. And good to read. Thank you for what you write, for what you remember.”—Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers and The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner; “W.D. Ehrhart has been leading the vanguard of Vietnam War poets for decades. It’s hardly news that Ehrhart has garnered the reputation of ‘the dean of Vietnam war poetry.’ But his poems over the last several decades are also steadily gaining him recognition as a major contemporary American poet, with a range far wider and deeper than that of just a Vietnam War poet. In fact, I cannot think of a poet who has been giving us deeper and more valuable insights to our epoch. His poetry is not just insightful and beautiful but also extraordinarily accessible.”— H. Bruce Franklin, John Cotton Dana Professor of English & American Studies, Rutgers-Newark, Emeritus, author of Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War; “W.D. Ehrhart is one of the most important and enduring writers to have emerged from the American war in Vietnam. Since the publication of his first collection, A Generation of Peace, in 1975, his prodigious poetic production has rightfully earned him a reputation as one of the preeminent poets of the war—a war that provoked an exceptional outpouring of poetry. The significance of his contribution to this extraordinary body of work cannot be overstated. Still, it would be a mistake to think of Ehrhart as solely a war poet. His pieces offer interesting reflections on many aspects of American life, and these poems are no less penetrating in their vision, skilled in their description, profound in their thinking, or powerful in their emotion than the war works. Ehrhart is a poet who deserves to be widely read.”—Dr. Adam Gilbert, Leverhulme Fellow, University of Sussex, author of A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam; “Bill Ehrhart is the poet perhaps of the Vietnam War.”—Studs Terkel, oral historian and author of The Good War; “Ehrhart’s Vietnam poems make a compelling argument against comfort, against apology, and against redemption. ...Ehrhart’s bleak beseechings have more in common with the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Stephen Crane than that of other Vietnam-era poets... Thank You for Your Service endures as a testament to truth-telling, the act of witness, and one ragged heart staying open after war, and for this, readers everywhere should be grateful.”—The Rupture. Reviews of The Bodies Beneath the Table: “The Poetry of W.D. Ehrhart is sublime, earthy, gritty and delicate, precise and original, uniquely appealing to both the heart and the intellect.”—M. L. Liebler, Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream; “Ehrhart takes the elemental experiences of our daily lives and transforms them into moments of compelling insight. These poems resonate with grace and decency.”—Dale Ritterbusch, Far from the Temple of Heaven. Reviews of Beautiful Wreckage: “Welded in the fires of Vietnam, these strong, sure, memorable poems encompass love, family, and supple lyrics like ‘The Way Light Bends.’ The clarity of vision and depth of feelings in these pages will enhance Bill Ehrhart’s standing as a major voice of his generation.”—Daniel Hoffman, poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, now known as Poet Laureate of the United States; “Bill Ehrhart is a wonderful poet, a force of nature, a conscience that won’t let us off the hook. His writing is not the fashionable embroidery that these days too often passes for poetry. There are neither ready-made emotions nor ready-made answers here, only authentic experience, transmitted indelibly by Ehrhart’s crat and art. Anyone who can read this book without tears would be well-advised to go back and learn again how to read, and how to live.”—Philip Appleman, professor emeritus, Indiana University. Reviews of Just for Laughs: “Above all, Ehrhart’s poems warn, we are accountable to future generations; we have a choice about what values we will pass on and which stories we will tell.”—Lorrie Smith, Landing Zones: Approaches to Literature of the Vietnam War; “Ehrhart’s voice may possess matter-of-fact rhythms, but that quality masques a content which bristles with intelligence and finally is downright startling.”—Michael Stephens, The Dramaturgy of Style; “Ehrhart’s poetry seems to catch in its flat cadences a tough realism and, through its accessible and direct mode of address, a genuine voice of conscience.”—Alf Louvre and Jeffrey Walsh, Tell Me Lies About Vietnam.