Kill Talk: On Military Language and Combat Poetry

Note: This is a FREE event for all military veterans.

Brandeis anthropologist Janet McIntosh interviewed nearly fifty combat veterans and visited the famous/infamous Marine Corps bootcamp at Parris Island as part of the research for her book on the unique language that emanates from the brutal training designed to prepare men and women for obeying orders under extreme stress, and the language created by veterans themselves as they experience situations for which no training could have prepared them. Professor McIntosh will be joined by two Vietnam veterans who will share the powerful stories of their war experiences through poetry and prose.

Janet MacIntosh is a professor of anthropology at Brandeis University, and a prize-winning cultural and linguistic anthropologist who has conducted work in East Africa and the United States. Her books and articles have explored colonialism, religion, ethnic conflict, political language, and the language of the U.S .military. She is co-editor, with Norma Mendoza-Denton, of Language in the Trump Era.

Marc Levy served as an infantry medic with the First Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1970. His work has appeared in Litro, CounterPunch, New Millennium Writings, The Westchester Review, Gargoyle, Pangyrus, Queen's Quarterly, and most recently in Solstice Literary Magazine. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. His website is Medic in the Green Time. 

Doug Anderson served as a corpsman with a Marine rifle company in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. His first book of poems, The Moon Reflected Fire, speaks to that experience.

The authors’ books will be available for purchase and signing.