Weigl enlisted in the United States Army shortly after his 18th birthday and spent three years in the service.
He left Penn State in 2000 and took a position at Lorain County Community College as a distinguished professor.
In addition to writing his own poetry, Weigl worked with Thanh T. Nguyen of the Joiner Research Center to translate poems of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers captured during the war.
Weigl and Nguten accepted an invitation from the Vietnamese Writers Association and traveled to Hanoi to receive assistance in translating the poems.
The Pulitzer jury's citation read: a powerful collection of poems that explore the trauma of the Vietnam War and the feelings that have never left many of those who fought in the conflict.
When Weigl's dramas are not revealing a mythical and violent Midwest, they unveil a disruptive, wargutted Vietnamese landscape in a way I can recall no other writer doing.
[8]In June 2014, Weigl was interviewed for the documentary Poetry of Witness, directed by independent filmmakers Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo.