Awards

National Endowment for the Arts Book of the Week for Veterans Day, November 6-13, 2014 (http://arts.gov/audio/poet-doctor-and-retired-navy-captain-fred-foote)

2015 Gold Medal  for Poetry, Military Writer’s Society of America

One of the Best Books of the Year, The Progressive (December 2014)

Best Poetry Book of the Year, Grace Cavalieri, poetry critic of the Washington Independent Review of Books/ Dragonfly Press (http://www.dragonflypress-ca.com/best-books-of-2014/)

Poetry Finalist, 2014 USA Best Book Awards (http://www.usabooknews.com/2014awardannouncement.html)

Schools and Universities

Medic Against Bomb is being used in coursework at the United States Naval Academy, the College of Southern Maryland, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), and other schools and universities.

 

Reviews

There are some standout poems I’ll remember until I die, and yet every page is a story of the course taken to face the horrible, and bring God through it.  Not only has Foote caught the story of our time, he’s caught the tone, in steely phraseology and invigorating imagery. These poems are written from the inside out, cavernous thought, brought out from the dark… This is a contribution to poetry and to humanity. —Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books, 18 NOV 2014 (featured review). http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/november-exemplars-poetry-reviews-by-grace-cavalieri1

With haunting imagery and consummate skill, Foote has created a masterpiece that deserves a place beside the very best war poetry. —Peter Dabbene, Foreword Reviews/ Clarion Review, November 2014.  https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/medic-against-bomb/

A terrific book, one of the best of the year… There is blood, and flesh, and tragedy here, but also beauty, especially in the loving portraits he paints of nurses, tending to Americans and Iraqis alike. War remains, but so does humanity. Matthew Rothschild, Senior Editor, The Progressive, December 2014

In the introduction to his extraordinary collection of poems, Doctor Against Bomb: A Doctor’s Poetry of War, Frederick Foote states: “Mourning is the only universal product of our current system of war.” Then, in verse as candid, often as ruthless, as a lethal wound – but always rife with compassion and remorse – he recounts not just the human, but the spiritual, cost of war. These are tough poems, yet imbued with a beauty borne of truth that one can’t turn away from… These poems are crucial. This volume is a Requiem. –Joseph Bathanti, Poet Laureate of North Carolina Author of Restoring Sacred Art

Fred Foote’s war poetry deepens and extends the mediations on war begun centuries ago by a blind singer in Greece and continuing through uncountable battles and recoveries up to Fallujah and Ganjgal. He pulls us down into terror and pain, fear and anger, laughter and love with a restive intelligence kneading ideas and language into aesthetic discernments that we cannot ignore. Go, but hold on. You’re in for a wild ride. –Ron Capps, founder of the Veterans Writing Project Author of Seriously Not All Right

There is a clear voice of compassion undergirding the poetry in Frederick Foote’s Medic Against Bomb. The poems are painful reflections on the residual traumas of war.. These are poems of witness and caring. –James Ragan, Emerson Prize Winner Author of The World Shouldering I

Frederick Foote’s visceral and eye-opening poetic vision takes aim against bloodless depictions of war. In these poems of exacting witness, Foote provides the missing details: the daily dressings and doses, the “scraps of a tongue” left behind, giving voice to the victims of battle…Refreshing, downright bracing, Foote reaffirms that war is anything but generic… these poems restore humanity to both enemy and combatant, leaving the reader with a fuller, clearer sense of the ongoing Iraqi conflict. –Martha Silano, Saturnalia Books Prize Winner Author of Reckless Lovely