UFR Weekly Newsletter #10: Answers

[David Cotrone]

I just got in from New York. It’s been a long week, and a good one. A lot of you sometimes ask questions about what we’re doing at UFR. A lot of you wonder what we’re up to. Well, HTMLGIANT was a kind enough to run an interview with us. I hope you find some answers.

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Imagine by Ethel Rohan

Brian Spears talks to us about his new book of poetry, A Witness in Exile.

I Used to Be On the Scene by Aaron Wolfe

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In Dispatches, Michael Herr writes of Vietnam, a soldier who’s seen three tours of duty. When he was home from his second tour, all the soldier could do was sit up in his room with an empty rifle. He held the gun up to his window and tacked like a sniper. He said, “I just can’t hack it back in the World.” Tobias Wolff, too, writes in his memoir that he couldn’t handle it. When he came back from battle he roamed the west coast wearing a big coat, his skin so pale it looked like he had just killed someone. He was so lonely he didn’t know what to do with himself. He decided to write.

I’ve decided to write, too. Not for myself but for those who have come home from war and are trying to deal with what they’ve seen, what they’ve been through. This may sound high and mighty but it’s not. It might sound like I’m trying to put myself on a pedestal, like I’m trying to give voices to the voiceless, but I’m not. These people have voices. I know because I’m talking to them. All I’m trying to do is tell a story.

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Thank you for submitting your work. We really love reading everything you send. If we’ve accepted what you’ve sent, please know we have it in a queue and that we haven’t forgotten about it. Thanks for your patience.

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I asked a Korean War veteran what he would change about the world and he said he would end all the fighting. He said, “The memories that I have will never go away. If there was no more war, there would be no more bad memories.” I asked a World War II veteran the same thing and he said if he could he would spend some time with his late wife.

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Thanks so much for your support and for reading each other’s stories.

Be well,

David