My friendship with Bill dates from the day I saw the rough draft of this. It made me weep, it conflicted me with guilt over my failure to serve in a war I so violently opposed thirty years ago. It sent me to Owen, to Hecht, to Bob Barth, to Henry Reed's Naming Of Parts. That is, it invites favorable comparison with the great work of our soldier poets. I think the regularity of its rhythm is incantatory and relieved by the masterful way the line lengths are altered. Rhina might be right about wonder, and a better word might be thunder.
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