2011 Term 2 Online Lesson 25/5 Task 1

The poem that I will be doing on is Rainbow Death by Hubert Wilson.

Difficulty Rating: * *Rainbow Death

America did not foreseeGreen, pink, purple and other colors death potpourri!Expecting others to pay a high price.Now thinking twice?Toll on the innocent and unborn.Omnipotent and disregarding who will mourn.Reflective about all the illness, birth defects and prematurely dead.All the deceit continues to spread.Nefariously America led astray -Generations untold WILL pay -Execrable effects of agent orange spray!Hubert Wilson

About the poet:

He was a Vietnam War veteran (as were his four brothers) who served in the USAF Security Service. He, along with a dozen or so intelligence school grads, prepped for about 14 months at Kelly AFB in San Antonio, Texas, before anticipating to be sent to Vietnam or elsewhere in Southeast Asia in 1970. About half of them ended up in Da Nang (an Agent Orange hotspot) in the 6924th Security Squadron. The rest of them, along with Hubert Wilson, were assigned to Shemya Island, Alaska, with the 6984th Security Squadron, and what eventually was a more contaminated environment than Da Nang!
Hubert Wilson’s health problems started approximately 15 years ago with unexplained headaches and limb pains. Four years ago his central nervous system radically deteriorated with Parkinsonian type tremors, severe headaches, progressive limb pains, etc. No physician has everdiagnosed the specific illness. No physician has ever rendered any form of medical assistance! Hubert Wilson’s number one educated guess is the heavily contaminated drinking water at Shemya during his year there as an intelligence analyst.
Fortunately, since his brain still functions moderately well (and I have mobility issues), he had turned to writing.

About the Poem:

Hubert Wilson’s Rainbow Death speaks of a modern day ingredient of warfare that has caused appalling death and suffering – not only to its intended victims, the Vietnamese people, but also the service personnel that used or even just came into contact with “Agent Orange”, which appears to be the code name for a herbicide and defoliant—contaminated with TCDD (Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin) —used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.

“From 1962 to 1971, Agent Orange was by far the most widely used of the so-called "Rainbow Herbicides" employed in the herbicidal warfare program. During the production of Agent Orange (as well as Agents Purple, Pink, and Green) dioxins were produced as a contaminant, which have caused numerous health problems for the millions of people who have been exposed. Agents Blue and White were part of the same program but did not contain dioxins.” -- Wikipedia

Thus, we can see from this quote why Hubert Wilson had written a poem entitled Rainbow Death. This poem, Rainbow Death, may remind us that wars actually are not over when the wars are over.

Source : www.warpoetry.co.uk/2010warpoetry.html