I'd never heard of Berrigan before I read this - I was looking for something to read to satisfy the "book written in prison" task for Book Riot's Read Harder 2019 challenge and stumbled across it. Berrigan, a member of the Catonsville Nine, was a Jesuit priest who was jailed for destroying government draft records during the Vietnam War, of which he was a fervent protestor. The poems were written during his stint in jail, and to be honest at first I didn't think they were very good. The collection's structured into three parts, and while the first part has some good poems ("Billy Bones", for one) it wasn't until the long poems of part two came along that the whole thing really kicked up into gear. "For Philip's Birthday", "My Father", and (later) "Uncle Sam, You're a Card" are outstanding. There's such a mix of pulsating rage at the monstrous acts taking place in the war (My Lai is mentioned over and over) along with the absolute disgust at a prison industry which takes advantage of the inmates to manufacture weapons which will kill the economically disadvantaged of another country - getting the poor and desperate to wage war on the poor and desperate, essentially.

Despite the rocky start, the collection becomes enormously compelling. Ugly, angry, but compelling. Very glad I read it.