“I believe the greatest possible memorial to the Vietnam War would be an end to all future wars.”
Post Traumatic Press was started in 2000 with the printing of The Best of Post Traumatic Press in the Bronx, New York. But the idea began a few years before. I was asked to go down to DC with other Vietnam veterans in the mid-90’s to visit the Vietnam War Memorial and felt really conflicted about going. After getting out of the Army I have always felt that any memorial for a war, no matter how well-intentioned and well-executed, in many ways glorified the whole idea of war itself.
I believe the greatest possible memorial to the Vietnam War would be an end to all future wars. It grieves me that my own grandchild will be growing up in a world no less dangerous and violent than that long-ago world of 1970 when I shipped off as a draftee to be an infantryman in the jungles near Phuoc Vinh. I did decide to go knowing it would be a long trip on that bus rumbling south down I-95. My wife Alison Koffler, a poet, suggested, Bring a notebook and try to write it down…and I did”.
people
Dayl Wise
Co-Founder
Dayl Wise was drafted into the US Army in 1969 with service in Viet Nam and Cambodia, 1970 and returned with a different mission in 1993, 95, 97 delivering medical supplies the form of reconciliation. He is an honorary member of the China Beach Surf Club. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, and is the author of Poems and Other Stuff (PTP, 2004) and Basic Load (PTP, 2009). Dayl lives in Woodstock, NY with his wife, the poet Alison Koffler, and is co-founder of Post Traumatic Press.
Alison Koffler
Co-Founder
Alison Koffler’s poems often arise from where the human world and the wilderness intersect. She was the recipient of the Poetry Teacher of the Year Award from Poets’ House and McGraw-Hill in 2003, and the Green Heron Poetry Award in 2011. She is the 2016 winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Award for poetry, having won it as well as in 1993, 2000, and 2006. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Iris: A Journal for Women, Heliotrope, and Home Planet News, and were included in the anthologies lifeblood: the woodstock poetry society anthology, Chickaree Press, 2011 and A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, SUNY Press, 2013. A retired educator, she works part-time for the New York City Writing Project at Lehman College. Alison lives in the Bronx and Woodstock, NY with her husband, the poet Dayl Wise and their dog, Cole, and is the co-founder of Post Traumatic Press.