Bruce Weigl - The Circle of Hanh

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Praise for The Circle of Hanh:

Bruce Weigl has long shown us how to make beauty out of tragedy by transforming the complex horrors of the Vietnam War into the complex pleasures of poetry. Now, in his memoir, The Circle of Hanh, he shows how a life, too, can be transformed. He has turned the tragedies of his life into a way of living that glows with redemptive beauty. The Circle of Hanh is a breathtakingly brilliant book.

Robert Olen Butler

No other poet but Bruce Weigl could be trusted to draw The Circle of Hanh. He possesses an extraordinary gift. Here is a generously told story which begins in a house without books and moves through a jungle war where the worlds light does not shine and ends with the rapprochement of fierce and elegant grace. To meet his daughter Hanh is to glimpse what makes the world go around.

Larry Heinemann

In the arc of human life, salvation and regeneration are rare items indeed. In Bruce Weigls The Circle of Hanh we learn again that on the surface theres nothing worse than war, and underneath, within the human psyche, theres nothing worse than the aftereffects of war. With this memoir Weigl joins Caputo and Herr in raising Vietnam to the level of literature.

Jim Harrison

For all their pain, these anguished memories are hauntingly beautiful to read, thanks to Weigls chasteness of diction, sonorousness, and use of such songlike devices as the refrain. This book is a life experience as well as a reading experience.

Booklist (starred review)

A deliberately turned and finely envisioned memoir, alternately harrowing and hopeful but consistently contemplative Weigls integrity and experience have produced a moving, singular, and highly readable storywhile his supple prose maintains the precise, stark imagery, crisp meter, and mordant understandings of his poetry.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Weigls intensely haunting language and imagery brings to mind other great writers of war literature, including Sigfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

Boston Herald

The Circle of Hanh

BOOKS BY BRUCE WEIGL

POETRY
Executioner (1976)
A Sack Full of Old Quarrels (1977)
A Romance (1979)
The Monkey Wars (1985)
Song of Napalm (1988)
What Saves Us (1992)
Lies, Grace & Redemption (selected poems and an interview,
edited by Harry Humes, 1995)
Sweet Lorain (1996)
Not on the Map (with Kevin Bowen,
edited by John Deane, Dublin, 1997)
Archeology of the Circle (new and selected poems, 1999)
After the Others (1999)

TRANSLATION
Poems from Captured Documents (translated from the Vietnamese
with Thanh Nguyen, 1994)
Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars: 19481993
(translated from the Vietnamese and edited
with Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen, 1998)
Angel Riding a Beast, poems by Liliana Ursu
(translated with the author, 1998)

CRITICISM
The Giver of Morning: On Dave Smith (1993)
The Imagination as Glory: The Poetry of James Dickey
(with T. R. Hummer, 1994)
Charles Simic: Essays on the Poetry (1996)

ANTHOLOGY
Writing Between the Lines: An Anthology on War and Its Social Consequences
(with Kevin Bowen, 1997)

The Circle of Hanh

A Memoir

Bruce Weigl

Copyright 2000 by Bruce Weigl

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weigl, Bruce, 1949
The circle of Hanh : a memoir / Bruce Weigl.
p. cm.
e-Book ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9518-0
1. Weigl, Bruce, 1949. 2. Poets, American20th century
Biography. 3. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975VeteransUnited
States Biography. 4. Vietnamese Conflict, 19611975Literature and
the conflict. I. Title.
PS3573.E3835z464 2000
811 .54dc21

[B] 99-40263
CIP

DESIGN BY LAURA HAMMOND HOUGH

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

for Peter S.

Contents

Part One
The River Where the Moon Falls

Part Two
Stories from the Hidden Book

Part Three
Wrestling Sharon

Part Four
Spike

Part Five
Sharons October

Part Six
The Borderline

Part Seven
Before and After

Part Eight
The Circle of Hanh

Acknowledgments

A version of The Borderline appeared originally in American Poetry Review and a version of Spike appeared originally in The Ohio Review, to whose editors I am grateful.

I am also grateful for the support of my friend Toby Thompson, who helped show me a way to tell my story; to Larry Heinemann for his friendship and his good writers eye; to Reg Gibbons for the same; to Morgan Entrekin, Eric Price, and Ellen Levine for their generosity of spirit and for their belief that I could write this book; and to Andrew Miller, who found a shape for my story.

And the saviors who are fast asleep
they wait for you
Bob Dylan

The Circle of Hanh

Prologue

I want to resurrect something ancient from inside me because I was not raised to be a man who cares for words as if they were living things. From birth, I headed in a direction away from books. Ive always felt most at ease digging some kind of hole, or carrying something heavy for low wages. In the grim apartments and the small houses where I grew up among working-class peopleimmigrants and the children of immigrantsthere were no books.

This is not a confession, except in the way all stories confess. This is a journey to uncover the story of how I arrived at where I am and who I am. I have forgotten a great deal. Ive lost track of too many details. Ive lost whole years to drugs and to that long, black postwar grief.

I dont know how it all happened. Im not even sure I want to remember everything. I dont believe remembering everything is necessary for our happiness or well-being. Some things need to stay buried deep. I have only a story and my belief in the ability of stories to save us.

Once I was a small boy among people who loved me as best they could. My mother was kind and she cared for me. She washed and mended with great care the clothes my older cousins passed down to me. She combed my hair with a black rattail comb dipped in a jar of green gel that made my hair wave up straight like a hedge. She worried for me when Id be out past the time I was due home in a way that made me feel cared for and wanted.

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