Permanent Party

by Michael Casey
2005; 32 pp.; $9
March Street Press
3413 Wilshire Dr.
Greensboro, NC 27408

By Tim W. Brown

In this provocative chapbook, MPs at Missouri's Ft. Leonard Wood during the Vietnam

War prefigure the notorious keepers of military prisons in Iraq and Gitmo today.

Jaded at best, sadistic at worst, the men described in Casey's poems are on a "permanent

party" from the war, where, like Charles Grainer, Lynndie England and their ilk, they are free to

indulge their malicious sides. When a prisoner, Mays, refuses to get out of bed, claiming that he's

praying, the guard Lake "gets the pail filled with water / and drops it on the praying May's face /

I don't mean just the water / I mean the pail." (p. 26)

The book's speaker witnesses these depredations and largely disapproves, although he

sometimes sides with his fellow MPs as they confront recalcitrant captives. After having a drunk

GI "spread 'em," "Harry and I didn't say a word to him / we just looked at each other / and then

kicked / the drunk's feet away from the wall / his face fell nose first / flat on the concrete / his

neck actually cracks and snaps up / and I would not a cared more less.... / he should a kept quiet"

-- and not insulted the speaker's mother and sister. (p. 1)

When they're not battling prisoners, the MPs battle each other: "they permanent party

personnel / they always arguing ... / the southerner the northerner." ("Lost Patrol" p. 31) An MP

from the South "hates yankees / because some jayhawker / copped one of his family cows / a

hundred years ago / or maybe it was a pig" (p. 30) South vs. North, noncom vs. officer, noncom

vs. noncom, base vs. off-base, herein lies a microcosm of male conflict.

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 The speaker ultimately prevails over his predatory environment through -- what else? -- a

college education: Urbi says that Lake "acts so smart / like he thinks he's big stuff / just because

he went to college / ... / I hate him I really hate him." The speaker responds that he went to

college; "do you hate me?" he asks. "I don't hate you man," answers the other MP, "you don't act

smart at all / you don't look smart either." (p. 19)

Casey, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, who doesn't write poetry

like a professor, makes clear education is the key to overcoming our base human nature -- even if

educated, well adjusted people occasionally lapse into brutish behavior.

In stark, concise and sometimes bleak terms, Permanent Party reveals many social

divisions. Shifting, arbitrary lines are drawn between you and your enemy, the Vietcong, and you

and your supposed friends, American prisoners and other MPs. Without an ounce of loyalty in

their nature, Casey seems to say, human beings are locked in a war pitting all against all.