The Vietnam War was fought in some of the world's most insect-rich environments — tropical jungles teeming with mosquitoes, leeches, centipedes, ants, and various other biting and parasitic creatures. American soldiers regularly suffered from malaria despite prophylaxis, and the psychological and physical torment of insect harassment was a constant feature of jungle warfare. The war produced a rich tradition of American veteran poetry, much of which drew on the sensory reality of the jungle including its insect life.

Vietnam War poets including W.D. Ehrhart, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Bruce Weigl wrote with unflinching attention to the insect world of the Southeast Asian jungle. Komunyakaa's Dien Cai Dau (1988), which won the Pulitzer Prize, includes poems saturated with the biological reality of jungle warfare, including its insects and the intimate relationship between the soldier's body and a landscape that seemed actively hostile through its insect life. The Vietnam insect poem updates the First World War louse poem for a new generation, relocating the bodily degradation of warfare to a tropical environment.