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Walking Wounded, Poems
by Robert Hilll Long
The dark poems of Robert Hill Long’s Walking Wounded
achieve redemption in their grim and graceful lines.
Sample Poems by Robert Hill Long
“Robert
Hill Long’s Walking
Wounded is a rara avis in these literary times: a work of
poetry that looks steadfastly beyond the self to the unpoetic world.
His fine lines trace the tragedies and ironies of war, conquest,
famine, death without the romance of a Revelation, but—when all seems
lost—redeem with images of resolution and hope. In these poems are the
biographies of people whose stories, though sometimes excerpted in
sound bites and film clips, are never told with the depth and empathy
found here. In these poems are images that haunt and infuriate all the
more because they are not only true, but real. Long looks at what we
overlook and does not—as we would—look away… he doesn’t even blink.
Like Kipling in ‘The Last of the Light Brigade,’ like Twain in ‘The War
Prayer,’ Long forces us to face at the aftermath of common acts,
embodied in flesh and bone and blood. Long asks Walt Whitman’s
question, ‘What is that you express in your eyes?’ and listens to the
answer, and though the answer may indeed be more than all the print
we’ve read, it is not too much for Robert Hill Long’s words.”—David
Bradley
“This poet knows that there are no survivors when it comes to war,
neither abroad nor at home. Everyone is wounded or traumatized in one
way or another. Long presents us with a cast of unforgettable
characters in poetry that packs a linguistic punch, line by line, image
by graphic image. His words are unflinching and sear the consequences
of human violence into the readers’ consciousness—and conscience. In a
country that often hides the results of its foreign policy from its own
population, poetry like this can still tell the truth.”—Kurt Brown
Robert Hill Long graduated in 1975 from Davidson College, where his
poetry was awarded a prize by Donald Hall. He received an M.F.A. in
1983 at the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers; in 1984 he was
founding director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. He has been
teaching at the University of Oregon since 1991, and has also taught at
Clark University, the University of Hartford, and Smith College. His
previous collections include The
Power to Die and The
Work of the Bow.
ISBN: 978-1936370818, 102 pages