David Brown:  

Mizzou then ten years in the Army. A year of medical trng in San Francisco (68-69) and then Viet Nam tours as a combat medic with 1st/14th Infantry and was there for the Cambodia invasions of May, 1970. Oddly enough, my wife was at Kent State protesting the invasion and just about got shot on May 4. Then I was at Ft Benning's Martin Army Hospital. My son was born there and plenty of combat vets to soak up the mixed emotions we all carried like bombs. I transferred to Nurnberg, Germany and the 130th Station Hospital. It felt good to be out of the states as the recoil from the war was getting heavier and most U S civilians just wanted to forget what I couldn't. Rachel and Aaron, learned to speak German likes natives and living in the spiritual heart of Nazism made us all think deeply about Viet Nam and our war in a new way. But our army was falling apart before my eyes. Lots of drugees and the rest of us drank too much. I was a good soldier and decorated combat vet but could not stand to watch the army break down. So I decided to go to poetry school and my wife thought I was crazy and divorced me. I was crazy but poetry school saved my psyche. Then ten years in California--grad school and life in the SF Bay Area. I lived in the Haight-Ashbury and attended San Francisco State and its Poetry Center. Earned an MA in Poetry and Comparative Lit. Ron Crabtree lived in Palo Alto, just south of SF, and I saw him frequently. He took the portrait of me that is on my first book of poems, Returning Fire, it was a big hit and I was active in the Vets movement there and read poetry frequently in cafes and bars. I loved the vets' community and literary scene but it is too expensive in California for a poet, so I took a job in Texas (89). And now twenty-one years in Houston teaching and writing poetry, obituaries, and essays mostly about war, Viet Nam and life in the last half of the 20th century. I am married to an artist from central Missouri for twenty years. She works in clay and encaustic. You can find some of my work and photos on 1-14th.com or google D F brown poetry. Or go to Texas Tech University press and order Unaccustomed Mercy or Carrying the Darkness, anthologies that contain about a third of my first book. For my time in Texas I have worked on school reform and writing curriculum. For ten years I was the educational director for a non profit, FotoFest, and trained teachers in a photo writing curriculum I developed with Wendy Ewald. When Mr. Wetzel passed away in 99 I felt like I owed public schools so much I went in to 7th grade classroom at 51. now,I teach lit and writing to high school freshmen at an early college and they keep me busy. And they remind me of my own h s days. This part never seems to change! I have three children and six grandchildren, two (Aaron's kids Clara and Diego)live three blocks away and keep me busy buying jelly beans. Rachel lives in south Florida with her son Tim, and Elizabeth is married to an Air Force guy and they are all over. Just now in California with Paul, Andrew and Sophia. I miss the Ozark hills and once a year float the Jack's Fork and visit my wife's family farm south of Boonville. I visited Spfd regularly when Bill Wetzel was alive and miss him sorely to this day. I see Jim McMillen from time to time and wonder from time to time what has gone by for the rest of the class of 66. Hope you are well and thankful to be so. I am also working on pulling my three books of poetry together for a Connected War Poems of DF Brown. It takes so much energy to drag that monster out and do the dance again. Always felt the war was between me and really going home to the Ozarks. Bill Wetzel made it easier to visit, but he has been gone ten years. Hard for me to believe, have lost Crabtree, Newberry, Ashcroft, plus many guys from the war and post war. So I look for connection in those hills. David Brown Mar 21 2010 I have to believe poetry will save the world, what is the other word? Spent the morn preparing to return to school tomorrow and teach a five week unit on poetry, called Modern LyricPoetry in a Multicultural Society. As I reworked my lessons I thought about the manuscript I built last week, 81 pages of pain called The Connected War Poems of D.F. Brown, that I hope gets published in this coming year. That experience energizes my lessons. I teach my students to recognize and operate poetic mechanisms and literary techniques they will need in college. I also teach them what I learned last week from my own poems: that part of my technique and style comes from what I learned in Bayless' salvage yard. Reclaiming old parts cleaning and repairing an old motor to run and a new motor to run faster. Automotive vocabulary h...Expand for more