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Smart Fish Don't Bite

By John Ketwig (reviewer)

Smart Fish Don't Bite
by W.D. Ehrhart
(Moonstone Press, 2025)

Bill Ehrhart is at it again, but this latest book is different. It's playful, irreverent, interesting, and fun to read. As always, Ehrhart's writing is crisp and clear, but this time he is clearly bothered by approaching 80 years old, being a cancer survivor, and being retired. A lot of Vietnam veterans will relate to those feelings! He starts the book with a Foreword, stating, "I have been increasingly able and inclined to have some fun with my writing." A few paragraphs later, he writes that he is not "inclined to worry much about how these more or less end-of-life poems will be received." He needn't worry.

There are 77 poems in this slender volume, with titles ranging from Squirrels, Brothers, Eating Oysters in Easton, Arachnid Blues, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Presidents' Day, Thirteen Ways of Coping with Trump '24, What I Miss by Sleeping Late, Thirteen Reasons to Doubt the Existence of God, The Uselessness of Words, When I'm Gone, Hail to the Freakin' Chief, and If Only Dad Could See Me Now.

I can't quote all 77, and it is damned hard to choose which lines from which poems deserve to be immortalized here. For instance:

From What It Is Worth
A team of Misfits, yes, I guess
that pretty well describes us,
thinking we could find a home,
build a world that we could live in,
one that everyone could live in
peacefully. How are we doing so far?
Not so good? As you say, "Ah, well,"
Cuchulain couldn't defeat the sea,
but that didn't stop him from trying.
The wilderness may well be calling
her children back; I wouldn't know
about that. I only know we've done
what we can; we can look at ourselves
in the mirror and not be ashamed.
Maybe a little foolish for being
naïve enough to think we could
make a difference, even after
all these years of failing to register
even a blip on this lunatic world.
But I'd rather live with that
than live with knowing I did nothing
to try to fix this mess we're all of us in.

Or, from

Soup Can Blues
Our president says the left-wing mob
are throwing soup cans at our cops
instead of bricks. Easier to throw,
and if you're caught, you can always
say you're only trying to feed the kids.
It's true that you can get a better grip
on Campbell's Cream of Mushroom
or Progresso Italian Style Wedding
than you're going to get on a brick,
and a can's more aerodynamic, too.
But what's all this about soup?
What's the matter with baked beans,
canned peaches, pineapple chunks,
Chef Boyardee Spaghetti O's?
Surely hungry kids'll eat that stuff.
Or even tuna fish? Those little cans'
like flat stones or silver dollars, man,
you'd get some wicked speed with those,
like throwing fastballs at a batter's head.
Cruising the aisles of a looted grocery
store, the possibilities are endless:
Armour Star, Amy's Organic, Wild Planet.
That's the trouble with our president:
he can't tell the truth to save his ass,
and still has no imagination.

And, from

God, Guns, and Ginny
Well, of course it was righteous.
Bear any burden, pay any price,
what you could do for your country.
Godless communists, after all.
You may have been only seventeen,
but you'd seen them already
in Hungary, Cuba, Berlin.
Something had to be done,
and someone would have to do it.
There is something about a thatched-roof
hut in the middle of rice fields, burning,
a mortally wounded woman softly keening, child dead in her arms,
that can't be blamed on Chairman Mao,
Castro, Lenin, or Das Kapital.
Heavy artillery flattened that home,
Ours. Our guns did that.
Long before I reached my thirteen months,
I discovered I had nothing to cling to …

And, lastly, from

How Poems Are Created
A fellow poet was planning a dinner
before my reading, and he asked me
if I had any food restrictions.
"I'm not too keen on Brussels sprouts
or eggplant," I replied. He said,
"Now that is a poem, my friend."
It wasn't. But it is now.

The cover of Smart Fish Don't Bite is a departure from Ehrhart's usual, consisting of a photo of his friend in full fly fishing regalia, waist deep in a stream, and holding a fish. The book itself is a departure, waist-deep in personal insights into a complex, passionate, and articulate guy. I don't hesitate to recommend you read it; Smart Fish Don't Bite is a great catch, completely enjoyable and worthwhile.

John Ketwig is a lifetime member of VVAW, and the author of ?and a hard rain fell, A G.I.'s True Story of the War in Vietnam, and Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter.