D. F. Brown's Ghost of a Person Passing in Front of the Flag traces a 19-year-old soldier's year in Vietnam and subsequent return, as he sifts through the horror for some peace with honor. In these dreamlike but never fragile poems, the narrator's Ozarks childhood merges with the nightmarish "triple canopy" of An Khe, both places equally combustive by the delirium of memory a swarm smeared across the page. Brown's world is built from words both ethereal and barbed, gleaming as gunmetal and a freshly-washed '59 Ford coupe on date night. Ghost is as much about the senselessness of war as it is the co-option of words in a country "sick with flags." By revealing the power of language, which "harbors expectations," Brown is astute enough to include the beauty we can make of the terrible. "Imagine," he writes, "all the red it takes to make this true.

" The absurdity of the American War in Vietnam never softens, but the invincibility and persistence of beauty cannot help but shine through. Wry observation rubs up against wonder, and while this never exonerates the individual and collective echoes of pain, Brown's artistry allows us to look at ourselves, at our history, and by encouraging us to face it, shines a light more powerful, we hope, than past and ongoing destruction. It is the poe's job to remind us of the sanctity of language: "words silhouette what we cannot keep.".