Newman 1111 .

eye surgeon, plastic protected cover



Sight & Insight Publications, 1973., 1973. SCARCE. An extraordinary book of Vietnam-era poetry and short essays. Inscribed and signed by the author on the front free endpaper: 'To Sara & Dick White / We shall dig our own hole / Stu'. First edition. Red printed wraps, 7 3/8 x 5 inches, 93 pp., 8 full-page b/w photo illustrations. Slight warp to covers caused by a tight-fitting clear plastic cover, as issued. The author was an eye surgeon and a major in the U.S. Army, obviously radicalized by the Vietnam War. For example, 'My Country Right or Wrong': 'Four score and Viet Nam years ago / In God we trusted / In the name of the father --- the son / Civilians in tears / Dressed as pallbearers / Black truth to the night / That our napalm was there. / Oh say can't you see in D.C. / How wrong we might be? / Bombs bursting in air / Their omen I fear. / A land of the brave and the free / Can we walk with integrity? / Our fathers who art in Washington / As we walk in the valley of the shadow / Of Hiroshima --- / Nagasaki --- / Of My Lai --- / I see much evil. / I pledge allegiance to my fellow man / That all are created equal. / Even if my country forgets.' One of the illustrations is a photograph of a horse's ass, and is captioned: 'Uncle Sam / Faith in the / Administration / Is Like Believing / in A '______' '_____'.' It refers to the poem on page 28, entitled 'Uncle Sam': 'Little Richard / Te-Tottered / On the Wall / Little Richard / Had a great Fall / All of - his horses / And / All of / His men / Were deployed - to Vietnam again.' On the back cover, 'A Conversation': 'An elderly patient of mine who was a veteran of the Second World War, a supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy and a Hawk on the Vietnam War once told me that if the bomb hit he wanted the last people on this earth to be Americans. Can you imagine that! There are over 3.7 billion people in the world --- most never even heard the word democracy, let alone know what the word means. It really takes balls to think that way, but everybody of his generation thought that way. Whites were better than Negroes, I mean Blacks --- because Black is beautiful and the Blacks wanted to be better than Whitey, and Negroes, I mean Black men were better than Puerto Ricans, and the U.S. was better than --- better than just everybody. Better, bigger, stronger and more powerful, and because people think that way we got our asses shot to hell in Vietnam, cause we see the forest for the trees --- / Because some people / Think it's patriotic to kill for one's country / an cowardly not to / Because some people / Think if one does not want to die for his country / He does not love his country / Because some people think --- / Too much country and not enough morality. / Because some people think loyalty rather than integrity. / Because some people don't think, it took ten years for Vietnam and less than one for Watergate. All I can say is that if the last female on this dear earth was a Russian and a Black Russian, not a White Russian, I'd march my pink little ass onto the battlefield, raise my lily white flag and make peace (one hell of a peace).'.