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Nathaniel Tarn:
DRAFTS FOR: THE ARMY HAS ANNOUNCED THAT "BODY BAGS" WILL FROM NOW ON BE KNOWN AS "HUMAN REMAINS POUCHES"


Trout Creek Press
5976 Billings Rd.
Parkdale, OR, 97041


8 pp., $1.50

The horror of modern warfare is only compounded by the official newspeak euphemisms that try to cover up what would be intolerable if confronted honestly. Tarn makes the honest call & calls mechanized murder what it is--neither valor nor patriotism, but only death. The language harks back to Whitman, but where Walt could see heroism mixed up in the carnage, here we only see "where there had been the principle of hope,/ now there is none--/ nor human nor divine,/ no condition forward."--luigi


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This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #2,
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.

Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press