When bullets almost took his life, Ed Micus’ poetry developed a soul
-
- -Submitted photo Ed Micus
-
-
-Submitted photo
Ed Micus in Vietnam with a young Vietnamese girl.
-Submitted photo Ed Micus
The seeds of Eddie Micus’ love of poetry were sown in a small green house on Second Avenue South in Fort Dodge where he grew up with his four siblings whose mother memorized poems from her own childhood.
But it was two decades into his life and 8,000 miles away, in a jungle in Vietnam, when his poetry developed a soul – but at no small cost to the 23-year-old Army infantryman. He was severely wounded in the abdomen by an enemy’s rounds while saving two fellow soldiers, an act of heroism that earned him the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
It was a soul that produced poetry like this, which he titled “M-16 Round”:
Little gymnast, how you spin,
how the flesh applauds
-Submitted photo
Ed Micus in Vietnam with a young Vietnamese girl.
when you tumble in,
ricochet off bone,
you’re a perfect ten.
One blink in an ambushed eye
and you’re already there.
You’re the quiet
in the dead boy’s ear.
Micus’ war poetry was an important part of a legacy remembered by his family, friends and his former colleagues at Minnesota State University, Mankato, who mourn his death Feb. 10 at the age of 80. His former wife, Fort Dodge native Jean Laufersweiler Fortune, said he died of cardiomyopathy. Like most veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, she said, “the hypervigilance, over-activity of the mind and nervous system, and sleep disorder are so hard on the heart.”
Fortune said he battled PTSD throughout his life but that “his writing kept him alive and his children kept him alive. He learned to cope with depression. When you know you have to take care of your children, you don’t take your life, you continue on. Eddie was writing poetry as long as I knew him. He had a way of looking at everything through different lenses. He would see as I would never see.”
“He did not speak of the war a lot, never bragged about it,” said Holly Dodge, a poet and an adjunct professor in Minnesota State’s English Department and someone Micus mentored early in her career. “I feel it defined his writing. It was a way of unpacking and unraveling things he saw and dealt with. I know the war haunted him. That’s why his poetry is so dynamic. He had a fragile sensibility for the way he wrote about things. He never played a victim of those things, he never wore his tragedies like a badge. When I asked him once where he kept his Purple Heart, he said, ‘I don’t know.'”
His first book, “The Infirmary,” based on his experiences growing up in Fort Dodge and his service in Vietnam, which included the poem “M-16 Round,” was awarded the 2008 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University in Ohio. In the foreword by Stephen Dunn, acclaimed American poet and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, Dunn called it “a rarity, a mature debut, a first book of poems with time-tested virtues” and said Micus’ Vietnam poems “will take their places among the very best war poems.” Micus also wrote a book, “Landing Zones,” a collection of short stories.
Edward Kelly Micus was born Jan. 23, 1944, 20 minutes before his twin brother, Bill. Their sister Maureen Micus Crisick recalled that “when kids teased him about being so much smaller than Bill, Eddie would say, ‘Yes, but I’m older.'”
As a single mother in their home, across from Sacred Heart Catholic Church and since demolished, Ruth Flattery Micus raised five children – Annamarie, twin brothers Ed and Bill, Maureen, and Mary Beth. Four were born in Chicago and Mary Beth was born in Fort Dodge. As a single mother, Ruth supported the family working as a secretary at Fort Dodge Laboratories. Her brother was District Court Judge Edward J. Flattery, who died in 1999.
The parents and grandparents of Ruth Flattery were pioneer farmers in the Fort Dodge area. She attended a two-room country school and was exposed to poetry when her mother Anna (who married Michael Flattery at Sacred Heart Church in 1905) would clip poems published in the Fort Dodge Messenger and put them into a booklet. Ruth was married to Edward Vincent Micus.
Crisick said their mother “was from the old school, the days of recitation. She had memorized those poems — Tennyson, Edgar Allen Poe and others — while on the farm. When she had her own family, she was always reciting those poems from memory. Eddie said we grew up in iambic pentameter. That was my mother’s style. ‘Oh mom,’ we’d say, ‘stop that, we’re on the 40th verse’.”
In a 2014 interview with the Mankato Free Press, Micus said he began writing poetry while a teenager and that his mother would recite poetry as she rolled out pie dough, which helped instill a love of language in her son.
“I can still hear her voice in my head,” he said.
All five Micus children graduated from St. Edmond High School and three of them — Eddie, Bill and Maureen — were graduates of Minnesota State University, Mankato, then called Mankato State University.
Annamarie Duncan lives in Denver, Maureen Micus Crisick and her husband William live in Walnut Creek, California, and Mary Beth Hollenbeck Kelly and her husband Robert live in Ridgway, Colorado. Like her brother, Maureen is a published poet and is also founder of the Moroccan Angels Project that helps further the education of girls in need in that north Africa country.
Eddie’s twin brother Bill died in 2020; he attended Minnesota State on a football scholarship, and it was a football injury that made him ineligible for the military draft.
“When Eddie was in Vietnam,” Maureen said, “Bill would have nightmares of fighting in the trench, being next to his twin brother.”
Recalled Dennis Lawler, who graduated from St. Edmond a year after Bill and Eddie and played football with Bill: “Bill was an excellent football player and, in today’s vernacular, he was ‘cut,’ although I don’t think he ever lifted weights. Eddie was significantly smaller than his twin brother, and he wasn’t a jock. He always had a smirky smile, as though he knew something you didn’t know. Everyone liked Eddie. His eyes twinkled.”
After graduating from St. Edmond in 1962, Micus held a series of jobs before his draft notice arrived and he was inducted into the Army in 1966. He told his sister Maureen at the time, “I’m just as deserving to go as the next guy.”
He got orders for Vietnam and arrived there on Valentine’s Day 1967 as an infantryman in the 12th Cavalry Division. On Nov. 7, 1967, he was point man in a rifle platoon that was dropped by helicopter to help another platoon under fire. He moved through heavy enemy fire to reach and carry to safety two of his wounded comrades. Micus took rifle wounds to his abdomen and suffered numerous shrapnel wounds. He was medevaced to a field hospital and then flown to Japan and later to Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver for surgeries. He was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his actions.
Micus married Jean Laufersweiler in 1969 in Maryville, Missouri., where they attended Northwest Missouri State University. Their first date was in 1966 in Chicago, where Jean was attending Mundelein College, a double-date arranged by Jean’s sister Ann and Jim Tornabane (who later married). Micus was drafted a short time later and the two corresponded by letter during his Army service. Jean got word of his injury through his mother.
When his treatment at Fitzsimons Hospital was completed, Micus enrolled at Northwest Missouri State and he and Jean were married there.. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and she completed her teaching degree. They moved to Minnesota where they both taught classes – Eddie teaching English, Jean teaching art – in the small towns of Storden-Jeffers and New Ulm.
They had three sons: Edward Nathan, who died in a car accident when he was 19, on the day of his father’s and uncle’s birthday; Mark Micus and his wife Judy of Oak Grove, Minnesota., and William F. Micus of Mankato. Ed and Jean divorced in 1980 but, Jean said, “continued to share our children…we still had to co-parent.” They were divorced while teaching in New Ulm and both moved to Mankato to attend Mankato State.
Micus loved to fish, Fortune recalled: “He and I used to fish small farm ponds when we were at Northwest Missouri State. He taught his three sons how to fish. He and his brother Bill fished together. Mostly, people talk about his writing, but he also loved the outdoors.”
His earliest poems were “terrible,” he told the Mankato Free Press. But when he returned from Vietnam, he turned to poetry to help process his feelings. “I felt almost an obligation to write about it,” he said. “I felt that I was luckier than many veterans in terms of dealing with post-war trauma, and I felt obliged to write about it. For me, poetry was the best genre to do that.
“The Vietnam stuff is narrative. I like to think it’s objective. Much of it deals with unpleasant circumstances and unpleasant emotions. It deals with the realities of war. Many people don’t want to re-experience that war. A lot of people don’t care to hear about Vietnam anymore. I can understand their feelings…It’s the damnedest thing. Sometimes I feel I have to write about the war. But on the other hand, there’s a part of me that wants to leave it alone for a while…I try not to write these war poems…I sit down to write a love poem or something lyrical and if the damn thing doesn’t turn into a war poem.”
In 1988 Micus was appointed assistant director for the Center for Academic Success at Minnesota State and worked there about 20 years. He also taught classes for the English department, including composition, creative writing and fiction writing. He earned a master of arts degree in creative writing in 1992.
Richard Robbins, who retired in 2021 after 37 years as a professor of English and creative writing at Minnesota State, first met Micus when Micus took his creative writing class.
“Vietnam was an experience that never left him, an experience that informed much of his writing, Robbins said. “But also poems about Iowa and Minnesota, living in the middle of America and the value of small towns and what he saw in the war.
“His legacy is certainly in the literary world, but on a more personal level he worked at the Center for Academic Success, helping students who needed help in their studies. He was just able to reach some people to get them over hump. He had a great sense of humor. He never forgot the people he left behind in the war, or the people he knew in Iowa and Minnesota.”
Micus’ writing lives on, Robbins said. He has a page at the Poetry Foundation web site.
Richard Meyer, who was a friend of Micus for 50 years, from the time when both taught in New Ulm, shared these thoughts:
“Eddie faced difficult and hard times in his life, but through it all he maintained his resilience, humor and creative talent. He was a friend to many and a mentor to aspiring writers. He had an engaging sense of humor. His conversation was filled with wit and clever wordplay.
“He wrote powerfully about the human condition — about its sorrows and tragedies, but also about the mystery, love and hope we find in life. He was adept at putting the best words in the best order for artistic and emotional effect. He understood that language is a magical gift. That through the careful and effective use of words we can better understand ourselves, others and the world. His poetry opens us to empathy.”
Fortune said a celebration of Micus’ life will be held at a date and place to be determined.
Spotlight appears on the first Saturday of each month. Paul Stevens profiles the accomplishments of Messengerland residents, present and past, whose life stories we hope will inspire and even entertain you. If you know of someone who would be a good Spotlight subject, send your suggestion to Stevens at stevens.spotlight@gmail.com.