Jim Soular

The Thousand-yard Stare Jim Soular

War is hell, and never has it been more hellish than in this moving collection of poetry by Viet Nam War veteran Jim Soular. Few today can deny that the war was a horrific tragedy, resulting in the deaths of 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians. The first section, "In Country," assaults the reader with all the charm of a meat grinder as the poet serves up image after violent image of the in discriminate carnage of war and the gruesomeness of death in the triple-canopy jungles of Viet Nam.  The second section, "Back in the World," returns us to the States but not necessarily to sanity as Soul arwades through the psychological after effects of the war for both the veterans and their families. With vivid and carefully chosen imagery, this section portrays the mind-numbing consequences of exposure to war, its accompanying PTSD, and the tremendous guilt, sorrow, and despair that many veterans and their families live with to this day. These poems are a raw, new look at war,vignettes of horror, guilt, and sorrow in what many consider America's longe stand most brutal conflict, as well as its most divisive since the Civil War.