At last, my Nagasaki poem appeared in the War, Literature & the Arts, an international journal of the humanities / Volume 34 / 2022, from the US Air Force. It was a long birthing process: two and a half years to be exact. And somehow strangely fitting that the Fall issue was published on the winter solstice, the coming of light.
I don’t publish very often. But this was a wait of epic proportions. First there was Covid, then the editor retired, then the website died, and the web hosting site died as well, so the entire WLA magazine had to be reconstructed from scratch—so this is a brand new website. Thank you, editor Thomas Maguire. Perseverance furthers.
“In 1989 WLA was launched as a simple collection of six essays examining the nexus of culture, conflict, and war. More than three decades later, WLA continues its exploration through a growing range of creative genres. Artists of all types share wars' jagged and fragmented horrors alongside its provocative and captivating narratives.”
When colleague Jane Hirshfield began to teach poetry workshops on the East Coast, I asked her why she was teaching poetry to West Point cadets, and she said they need poetry more than ever. So I took a page out of her book and submitted this poem to the US Air Force Academy, never dreaming they would take my poem. what a great solstice gift, considering the source of the light. I am Shiva.
Featured poet, John Balaban, with whom I shared a publication credit in the 1995 anthology, Atomic Ghost: Poets respond to the nuclear age, (his title poem, BTW), quoted WH Auden in his preface in WLA.
“The problem for a poet in writing about modern war is that, while he can only deal with events of which he has firsthand knowledge—invention, however imaginative, is bound to be fake—his poems must somehow transcend mere journalistic reportage.”
Hopefully my poem transcends mere journalistic reportage.
Table of Contents and intro.
Maureen Hurley / War’s End (3 Days After Hiroshima)
Here is my blog link with photo which they didn’t use.
At the last minute, I was asked to create an author’s note:
Author’s Note
Hurley’s uncles served in the army and navy; one built Liberty Ships at Marinship in Sausalito. Her father served in the Coast Guard, and a cousin, a mathematician, worked on the Manhattan Project. Her neighbor, a ship’s captain, was torpedoed in the Mekong Delta incident. She remembers ducking under her desk as atomic bombs were being detonated in Jackass Flats, NV. Her algebra teacher was Olympic runner and gold medalist Archie Williams, famed Tuskegee airman who trained fighter pilots.
These fragments of personal history inform her writing. Her poems have appeared in Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (Coffee House Press, 1995), and myriad periodicals. Hurley was co-editor of Tracks in the Widest Orbit: Collected Poems of J. H. Montrose (Russian River Writers’ Guild, 1985). Montrose, a WWII pilot, shared his observations of the Bikini Island nuclear tests with Hurley, and he told her how he flew over Japan dropping leaflets warning them of the Hiroshima bombing. Maureen grew up piecing together fragments of war stories. Poet Jane Hirshfield, who taught poetry to cadets at West Point Military Academy, suggested she submit her poems to journals that address war and its consequences
