Bruce Weigl
Soon after turning eighteen, Bruce Weigl enlisted in the Army and served in Vietnam for one year, beginning in December 1967. He was awarded the Bronze Star and returned to his hometown of Lorain, Ohio, where he enrolled in Lorain County Community College. As Weigl states in his best-selling prose memoir, The Circle of Hanh (2000), “The paradox of my life as a writer is that the war ruined my life and in return gave me my voice.”
Weigl earned his BA at Oberlin College, his MA at the University of New Hampshire, and his PhD at the University of Utah. After teaching at Penn State for many years, Weigl returned to Lorain County Community College as the school’s first Distinguished Professor. In addition to teaching, he started a student veterans group and, in 2008, founded the online North Coast Review.
CPC Readings
Sunday, November 11, 2007
with Brian Turner
The Art Institute of Chicago
Poetry by Bruce Weigl
The robin is so quarrelsome. He barks to no one in the trees;
he fluffs his body twice its size and rattles in the leaves.
He doesn’t know or won’t accept the nest is empty now,
the eggs a tatter on the ground.
Because this evening Miss Hoang Yen
sat down with me in the small
tiled room of her family house
I am unable to sleep.