The Infirmary

Foreword

ix edward micus’s The Infirmary is masterfully arranged and paced. its first section is comprised of poems that have a certain midwestern charm and emphasis on the local, which appeal but do not presage the darkness and gravity that will follow and accrue. What they display, however, is one of theauthor’sconsiderablestrengths:afinelytunedear.“minnesota,march,” for example, ends: slug-heavy, we’re clumsy as thumbs. our teeth fatten, the whites of our eyes have cracked. There’s a static under the skin, a castanet of bones. our breath rattles the teacups. as Judge, i was faced with winnowing down a slew of finalists to a few manuscripts that would merit serious consideration. We judges tend to readrathercruellyatfirst.asmuchaswe’relookingforsomethingtocatch our attention, we’re looking to see what can easily be excluded. micus’s manuscript had its sonics going for it and a deft handling of syntax. and increasingly i felt in the presence of a maker of poems, someone whose language had passed a lot of hard tests. his work bespoke a history of serious reading; there were poems behind these poems. iowaandminnesotagivewaytoVietnaminhissecondsection.Though i was the judge in 2008, i wouldn’t have been surprised, of course, to find poemspertainingtoiraqorafghanistaninafirstbook,butiwasreadinga soldier’spoems,andtheyweresetinVietnam!Whoisthissomeone,ikept wondering. his is a distant war. for how many years has he been writing these poems? and should that matter? i suspected that it did matter. That is,thepoemswerebetterforhavingbeensolongconsidered:TheInfirmary is so fine and disturbing. it’s divided into four sections: “Just Visiting,” “Waiting room,” “Ward 3 a,” and “Lower Level morgue.” each section has its particular integrity, and each delivers in tone and substance a different aspect of the book’s title and of micus’s involvement in it. The insouciance of the first section, “Just Waiting,” yields to the higher personal stakes of the second section, “The Waiting room,” which in turn yields to poems and prose pieces in section f o r e W o r D B y s t e P h e n D U n n x three, “Ward 3 a,” about people variously damaged. in many of these we hear and see that micus has absorbed the lyrical prose of tim o’Brien, the verseofrichardhugo,and,inthisexample,sylviaPlath’sabilitytokeepher language vivacious while describing what’s unattractive or dark. you’ve brought flowers? rather a rag or wrench, something to catch in my gears. you see there’s no religion here. my dervish whirls without a prayer. have a seat. i’ll take the air! i have hiccups under my skin, these tics, little lovers, i’ve married them. —from “Visit” The fourth section, “Lower Level morgue,” lives up to its title. it’s a nightmaretoldyearslater —alittlemoreawfulbecauseit’srecollectedwithpoise and restraint and a daring complicity. Unlike many of the Vietnam poems written at the time of the war or shortly thereafter—poems of anger or protest—edwardmicus’spoemsarecomposed,ineverysenseofthatword. Theydelineateandmeasuretheirsubjects;theydonotadvocateorhector; they do not sentimentalize. many of them, like “ambush moon” and “so We shot,” will take their places among the very best war poems. The Infirmary is a book that keeps deepening its concerns. for all its early charm, it pretties up nothing. yet it’s not without humor, and its prose interludes are written with the same care that the poems themselves exhibit. We have before us a rarity: a mature debut, a first book of poems with time-tested virtues. ...