Published Works

Rubicon : The Poetry of War

In the literary tradition of Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien, Marine combat veteran Stanton S. Coerr delves into the passions of fighting men.

Brotherhood, friendship, loss and love transcend the violence of combat. Poetry gives us the other end of the human condition: the softest of words for the hardest of truths. At its best, it asks us to look inside ourselves.

In Rubicon, Stan Coerr blends the gifts of the natural writer with the experience of a man who has been to war. Through poetry, he shows us the best of what we are.

Undertow

In his first book of poetry, Rubicon: The Poetry of War - winner of the 2016 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Gannon Award - Stan Coerr wrote of men; combat, fatherhood, fear and loss.

In his new collection, Undertow, he explores another side of the human condition: the intricacies and subtleties of passion and despair.

Rough Men Stand Ready

This book is about tribes.

A tribe requires young men to undergo a rite of passage, a time in the wilderness overseen by the elders. This rite for Marines is Officer Candidate School or boot camp.

The tribal elders are drill instructors and they are feared, and at their hand is the next generation shaped. A tribe requires veneration of elders.

These elders wear their status on their collars and their history on their chests. ~

A tribe requires its warriors to cut their hair all the same distinctive way. ~

A tribe allows you to mark yourself once you have been accepted. Those markings on biceps and triceps and chests are burned in with needles and ink and celebrate group above self.

~ A tribe requires blood oath.

~ A tribe venerates its past in song and story. Marines sing of the Halls of Montezuma and stand straight and celebrate those who fell.

~ A tribe has a defined path to rule, overseen by the chieftains. These Marine chieftains are generals and Sergeants Major and their word is handed from on high by oral and written tradition, and it is followed without hesitation, and that path to rule is beset by strife and fear and blood.

~ A tribe has its own language, impossible by design for the uninitiated to understand. Only members of the tribe may speak that language. It is stripped down from normal speech into a patois of slang, insult, shorthand and icon, and refers constantly to rites and shared past an outsider has not experienced and never could.

~ A tribe celebrates the drawing of blood and the defense of its warriors, and there is no individual veneration without his trial benefitting the group.

~ A tribe is swift in excommunication of those who cannot compete.

~ A tribe exists to continue itself and that which it finds true, exports violence, and rewards death.

~ A tribe does not care about the individual warrior. The tribe protects itself. The warriors will die without hesitation for one another.

Those who do so are the basis of the songs and stories and the sacred texts. ~

This is one of them.