How many ways can you tell a story? At the English Reading Series, Chris Crowe explored one unique approach: writing novels using only poetry.
How well do we comprehend the true cost of war? When faced with just statistics—lives lost, years fought, battles won, dollars spent—it can be difficult to see beyond the numbers into the true impact of conflict on the people involved.
Professor Chris Crowe (Adolescent Literature) grew up during the Vietnam War and has written a few stories about the war, seeking to capture the so-often-overlooked humanity behind the statistics. In his English Reading Series presentation on September 27, 2024, Crowe read excerpts from two of his works: his 2014 novel Death Coming Up the Hill and another work in progress he hasn’t yet titled. His stories reveal the nuances of the impact of war on both the people who serve and the people left behind.
A Syllable for Every Soldier
Crowe’s novel Death Coming Up the Hill looks a bit different from what you might expect from a traditional novel. Rather than writing it in typical prose, Crowe chose to write it using 972 haikus—one syllable for each of the 16,592 soldiers who died in Vietnam in 1968, the worst year of the war.
In writing the novel, Crowe tried to go beyond the numbers and really feel what life was like in the 1960s. But with such limited space for such an immersive story, a line from the beginning of the book comes true: I’ll/write what needs to be/remembered and leave it to/you to fill in the/gaps.
When Crowe finished the book, one of those gaps—the sense of loss for boys and men who never came home—stuck with him. “There are some still today where families don’t know what happened to their son, father, brother,” he said. “He’s still just listed as missing. . . . I’ve been thinking a lot about who’s left behind when someone’s declared missing in action.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about who’s left behind when someone’s declared missing in action.
That lingering feeling became the start of another manuscript, a current work-in-progress Crowe has tentatively titled either Lottery or Missing. The manuscript consists of a series of poems that tell the story of a missing soldier from the perspective of everyone around him—but never his own perspective. Crowe said, “My plan is to never say his name, never have him speak except for someone repeating what he said. . . . He’s missing in action, and the actions remaining are the people left behind who are trying to fill the hole.”
The Influence of Empathy
Crowe’s inspiration for both pieces comes from a deep empathy and recognition for every single soldier’s story, leaving readers to feel and ponder that empathy for themselves. Crowe talked about the hours and hours of research he did to immerse himself in the time period, reading the stories of families who have been waiting for their brothers and fathers and sons to come back—or at least for information that could give them some closure. “It’s really crushing to think about that,” he said. “I think even today, when we hear somebody dying in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in Israel, that’s somebody’s kid. Somebody’s son or brother. It’s real pain. . . . I was trying to get my mind around what it was like to be a survivor of the missing.”
Check out the other speakers for the English Reading Series this semester here.