Still Seeing a Dead Soldier, Poems by James Deitz

The powerful poems of James Deitz's Still Seeing a Dead Soldier evoke a sense of loss, and of praise: for those lost, for how they lived, for how they are remembered, for how we carry on.

Sample Poems by James Deitz

"These poems are heartbreakingly powerful as they give voice to a veteran's experience of profound loss as well as his determination to recover from loss by surviving. There are no easy solutions here. War and its aftermath are personal for this poet, and his poems help us understand that war, soldier by soldier, is personal for all. James Deitz has crafted staggeringly painful, beautiful poems that shatter the silence kept by many veterans about their experiences of war and surviving war. These poems will connect veterans to one another as they remind every reader of the value of life."-Kathleen Peirce

"As you read the poems in James Deitz's Still Seeing a Dead Soldier, be prepared to fall in love with someone who will never return home, and someone who returns forever changed. This is a love story. A story of loss and identity. The singular focus of this book creates a searing intimacy that will leave an indelible memory for all who encounter it. This isn't a bird's-eye-view of a war. These poems exist deep down inside of a war, within the body of one soldier, a soldier who has lost a comrade and will never be the same."-Brian Turner

"'I only saw Alicia Adams / die once,' James Deitz writes. And then, as if to defy the brutal truth and pathos of these lines, Still Seeing a Dead Soldier witnesses her death over and over again, refusing to look away from the personal trauma of losing a beloved within the colossal traumas of war. The poems are haunted by a face, a voice, a 'red bra / bleeding through her/ Air Force blues' as equally as they are haunted by a desire to be free of them. These are poems of elegy and witness, of the heart and the war that breaks it. Journalism can help people learn about the effects of war and PTSD, but James Dietz's brave and bountiful poems make us feel them."-Cecily Parks

James Deitz is a veteran, who served in the military for five years with two deployments for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and taught English in Korea for four years. He has enjoyed reading and writing poetry since high school in Merkel, Texas. However, after war, writing became a sense of therapy and a necessary way of expressing emotions-redirecting trauma into art. Presently, he teaches technical writing in Seoul, South Korea. He can be found at www.ptsdpoet.com.

ISBN: 978-1625492906, 50 pages

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