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September 2, 2004
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
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By Kent Harris,
Stars and Stripes European Edition
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| Poet, author and “literary activist” E.
Ethelbert Miller makes a point Tuesday during a presentation
to soldiers at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, Italy. Miller and
novelist Richard Bausch encouraged soldiers, many of whom deployed
to Iraq and will soon head to Afghanistan, to put their experiences
to paper. (Kent Harris / S&S) |
VICENZA, Italy — It took years for E. Ethelbert Miller to digest
a few of the defining moments that shaped his life.
For Miller — now a famed poet, professor and self-described “literary
activist” — those moments include the entry and exit of his older
brother into a monastery, his sometimes combative relationship with
his mother, the death of his brother and father and growing up black
on the East Coast in the 1960s.
Miller told a group of soldiers Tuesday at Caserma Ederle that
he felt, and still feels, a need to write down his emotions. So
he started penning poetry.
“What can a person learn from your life?” he asked the assembled
group, most of whom had seen combat with the 173rd
Airborne Brigade in Iraq
recently. “What have you been a witness to?”
Miller spent more than an hour telling troops about some of the
experiences that he had witnessed and put down in ink. Many of his
stories had the soldiers laughing.
There are some stories, even in a wartime environment, that could
also earn a few chuckles. But others inspire other emotions. And
the National Endowment for the Arts wants to hear them all.
So the NEA is soliciting material from servicemembers and their
families on their wartime experiences, according to Maribeth Walton
McGinley, a member of the National Council on the Arts. At the end
of the series of workshops it is conducting, the NEA plans to select
and compile the best of the soldiers’ works and publish an anthology.
“You have some wonderful stories to tell that the American people
aren’t hearing,” McGinley told the troops. “We have a World
War II generation whose stories are being lost. We want to hear
your stories right now.”
McGinley, whose Marine
Corps colonel husband is stationed in the Pentagon, said it’s
“the first time that the endowment has focused on programs in the
military.”
Authors such as Miller and novelist Richard Bausch, who was also
in Vicenza on Tuesday, are visiting with troops as part of Operation
Homecoming, the NEA initiative encouraged by the Department of Defense.
The object, according to program director Jon Peede, is pretty
simple.
“We are encouraging the troops to write about their wartime experiences,”
he said. Those actually involved in an event have a perspective
that can’t be duplicated by others who weren’t there, he said.
Those words were echoed a short while later by Brig. Gen. Jason
Kamiya, the commanding general of the Southern European Task Force
(Airborne) who will lead most of the base’s active-duty population
into Afghanistan
early next year.
“No one can write about your experiences and your feelings except
for yourselves,” he said. He encouraged soldiers to write down their
thoughts during their next big mission and to plan on how they’ll
do so.
“You do have good stories to tell,” he said. “There are people
in the States, your peers, that look to all of us in uniform as
role models.”
The NEA hopes to elicit material from all of the services and their
families. Peede said Vicenza is the third base visited, following
stops at Fort Drum, N.Y., and Camp Lejeune, N.C. The next scheduled
trips are to Fort Richardson in Alaska and Norfolk, Va.
Author Tom Clancy, probably the best-known of the dozens of authors
who are volunteering for the project, will make an appearance there
to talk to sailors and their families.
About a dozen visits are set — presently none of the others are
overseas — but Peede said the program’s popularity might prompt
additional trips.
The published anthology will be distributed free on military bases
and libraries, according to an NEA spokesman. And even if a submitted
work does not make the book, it will become part of a permanent
NEA collection chronicling the war.
Some of those present during Miller’s presentation said they plan
to deploy with pens, paper and plans to produce.
Spc. David Stewart said his tour in Iraq was full of “lots of experiences,
but I don’t know about just jotting them down.”
He said he did write some poetry in country, just to try to get
his thoughts on paper to revisit later.
Spc. Phillip Harrill, also a member of 1st
Battalion, 508th Infantry Regiment, said he lost most of what
he had written in Iraq. He said he wasn’t sure how important it
was to anyone else.
“Things I wanted to remember for myself,” he said. “Things I’ll
probably never do again when I leave the Army.”
And things that the NEA says it wants to keep and share with other
Americans and future generations.
For more details on the project, see the Web site: www.nea.gov/national/homecoming/index.html.
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