"poems or not by Alan Farrell, paratrooper sergeant in the Great War." Exquisitely melodious and funny chapbook of Vietnam war poetry by former Green Beret and VMI Professor Alan Farrell, author of Pouty Lips, Tight Jeans (film reviews, also available here). Masculine, comic, singing, clever, melancholy--after the manner of the great early 20th century verse stylist-satirists: Auden, MacNeice, Betjeman, cummings ...

Featuring the work of 15 Viet Nam War veteran writers, this anthology of poems, stories, and essays looks through the lens of past and present perspectives and defines how modern warfare affects the lives of those who lived it and their families.

"Dave was there for it all--there for the millennial latch-key children's plunge into bloody and politically-dubious combat, there for the US military's rocky evolution from Cold War Era to fighting the global war on terror, and there for his own turblent, colorful transitions--all in the unforgiving jungles of hyper-masculinity. . . . An artistic nail-bomb: 'Spent Shell Casings' encompasses just about every sordid and hilarious aspect of military life that could ever grace a page, all the while exposing the dark sides of adventure and the fighting man in ways that can no longer be ignored. Whether Iraq, a psych ward, or a barroom brawl, coming to terms with one's upbringing or drug abuse: join a Recon Marine at various points on the deadly map of war, meaning, and the American experience."--Back cover.