Writing program for troops comes to light through NEA

The writings will create an archive of history, the NEA chairman said.
NEW YORK (AP) -- At a poets conference in New Hampshire last spring, the chairman of The National Endowment for the Arts found himself discussing an event that couldn't have seemed further away: the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"I was talking to my old friend, [poet] Marilyn Nelson," Dana Gioia said. "She had just taught at West Point and my own sister had been called to active duty, in the Navy reserve. We were talking about how separate the worlds of literature and the enlisted man and woman were."
Gioia has decided to change that. This week, the NEA is unveiling "Operation Homecoming," in which troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will attend workshops run by such writers as Tom Clancy, Tobias Wolff and James McBride. The best submissions will be published in an anthology, scheduled to come out at the end of 2005.
"I've always believed that one of the signs of a healthy society is when all aspects of that society communicate with each other," Gioia said.
Authors to participate
Twenty-six authors will participate in "Operation Homecoming," which Gioia expects to get under way this summer. The program has an initial budget of $300,000, with $250,000 donated from Boeing, Inc., a leading defense contractor. Gioia said the Boeing money comes without restrictions and that submissions will be based on artistic merit, not on whether they're pro- or anti-war.
"The NEA, as a matter of principle, does make decisions on the basis of content," Gioia said.
In selecting writers, Gioia said his priority was knowledge of the military, whether personal background or subject matter. Poet Louis Simpson and fiction writer-memoirist Tobias Wolff are both military veterans. Another writer, Bobbie Ann Mason, is known for the novel "In Country," about the daughter of a Vietnam soldier. Contributors include such hawks as Clancy and doves such as Richard Wilbur and Marilyn Nelson.
"I don't feel I would have to bring my feelings about war into the workshop. The workshop is to help soldiers find their own voices and not impose the teachers' idea of truth on them," said Nelson, the poet laureate of Connecticut and one of many poets whose opposition to the Iraq war helped lead to first lady Laura Bush's postponement last year of a literary symposium.
"We are proud of the fact we have free speech in this country, and if soldiers tell the stories of combat, their stories can't be all pleasant and joyful. These are stories they need to tell, and that we need to hear," Nelson said.
Gioia expects three benefits from the program: allowing troops a chance to organize and clarify their thoughts, establishing a historical archive and developing artistic talent within the military.
Some of the greatest literature has been inspired by war, dating back to Homer and continuing throughout the 20th century with such works as Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." Classics about war have ranged from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's celebratory "The Charge of the Light Brigade" to Joseph Heller's satirical "Catch-22."
But few notable books have come from recent conflicts. Mailer has cited the end of the draft, in 1972, leading to a pool of troops that may not have a "high literary orientation." Gioia doesn't know the impact of the draft's end, but he agrees war literature has declined since Vietnam.
"We have the best-educated and best-trained military in American history. I can't believe that there isn't considerable artistic talent among this huge number of people," Gioia said.
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