| Author: |
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Michael Stuart Burns
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| Title: |
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After A Little Stint In A Little War: Reflections On Going Berserk |
| Moochable copies: |
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No copies available |
| Topics: |
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| Published in: |
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English |
| Binding: |
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Paperback |
| Pages: |
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532 |
| Date: |
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2011-07-28 |
| ISBN: |
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1432775294 |
| Publisher: |
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Outskirts Press |
| Weight: |
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2.05 pounds |
| Size: |
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7.32 x 1.05 x 9.54 inches |
| Wishlists: |
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| Description: |
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Product Description
"courage is spread on a Procrustean bed of let us and cowardice..."
Perfectly seasoned with archetypal themes of the human condition, this provocative smorgasbord of poems has been skillfully seined from the pools of history, literature, theology, and science. Michael Burns has fermented the fetid fruits of war and tapped the stench into a robust and complex vintage of poetry. If Homer were here today he would drink a case of Burns.
The tragedies of war are ineffable, and tether a shallow victory for its survivors. Those left struggling with PTSD know a soul-sucking hell that breathes only nightmares, the scent of terror, and the unforgettable sound of the dying...screaming for their mother and God. War is governed by illusions of power, and disorients man like a house of mirrors. It reflects ignorance and the darkness in Man gone feral. It is a place where the human compass fails, for war changes all the rules and like the wrath of Achilles...it can make a man go berserk.
"After a Little Stint in a Little War"...simply defies definition. Still, it courses along singing and slaying both truth and lies, exposing the hideous and sublime, toasting and roasting classical history and literature, yet offering contemporary inquiry as to the whereabouts of a guiding god..."or is it just some drunk capt'ning us cross this firmament"? It's a romp and a stomp, its Genghis and Jesus, bureaucratic blow-jobs and political snow jobs, it's whiskey, tobacco, and horse-flesh; it's Homer, Flaubert, Joyce and the Celts, the shores of Carthage and the Oracle of Delphi . Embedded within are the whores and horrors of war, all cascading through a tempest stream of ...Burns. His humor and wit survived the crucible of hell and from the fire he forged a novel in verse, "...a butchers block an executioners dock, a madman's book...".
"I got the boys out of the jungle...but even god can't get the jungle out of the boys"
-Michael Stuart Burns
Flying alongside Satan and Saints, quickly moving in to harvest the dying and wounded splayed on the killing fields in the Iron-Triangle of South Vietnam, a faithful Army air-ambulance medic, Michael Burns, passionately competed in gathering human spirits. Against all odds he raised them from the jungle's floor onto helicopters; us hering them to hospitals, home, and headstones.
Ironically, before his deployment to Vietnam, Burns was lifting spirits from the choir in his monastic home at the Passionist monastery in Louisville, Kentucky. Aptly named, "The Flying Monk", Burns was steeped in faith and covered in prayers, but finally he was taken hostage...by the war itself. PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) left Mike Burns fighting to lift even his own spirit. Many years following his "little stint" in the war Burns was caught in a surreal web of truth and illusion, tormented, until finally he melted into a stream of verse...a little "war inspired" poetry. His poetry stretches beyond personal experience to reveal ageless battles of the human condition, and those wars fought on the holy fields of man's own conscience.
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| URL: |
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http://bookmooch.com/1432775294 |
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