essay on war poets

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There is more to war poetry than mud, wire and slaughter

Poems about the first world war have defined the genre for decades. It is time to hear from new voices that reflect a wider view of conflicts

W hen we say “war poetry” today, the sort of writing that comes to mind is a conglomeration of Wilfred Owen , Siegfried Sassoon and the other great writers of the first world war. It means descriptions of mud, wire and slaughter on a horrific scale. It includes accusations that the top brass prolonged hostilities for no good reason and that people at home supported the cause in ignorance. It involves fierce protest as well as intense sympathy. It issues a warning.

Because poetry of this sort has been drip-fed into British schools for several generations (interestingly, the process did not start as soon as the war ended, but only began in earnest during the 1960s), it has settled in the public mind at an extraordinary depth. There are large benefits, of course. The best poetry of the first world war is exceptionally powerful – not just the lyrics of Owen and others, but the more complex and modernistic narrative of In Parenthesis by David Jones (which still has some claim to be considered a neglected masterpiece). Furthermore, by rubbing its readers’ noses in the brutal facts of conflict and suffering, it possibly creates a social value as well – by helping to educate people in the human cost of war, and in the process discouraging them from starting or supporting another one.

At the same time, maybe there are disadvantages. Perhaps by placing such an emphasis on war poetry in the school curriculum, we don’t actually put people off the idea of fighting, but inculcate the idea that it is somehow normal for the British to take up arms? Perhaps it solidifies the idea of us as a war-like nation? There is a literary consequence to the classroom focus too. By concentrating on the poetry of one conflict, which to an important extent is shaped by its particular circumstances, it directs attention away from the poetry of other wars.

Not just the poetry of other wars, in fact, but other kinds of war poetry. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” says the dead soldier encountered in Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “I parried; but my hands were loath and cold”. This summarises the whole circumstance of first world war poetry: it often involved hand-to-hand fighting; it was intimate. The second world war, by contrast, was for many soldiers a more distanced affair. Keith Douglas when taking aim in his poem “How to Kill”, says: “Now in my dial of glass appears / the soldier who is going to die”. He still thinks of him as a fellow creature (the soldier “moves about in ways / his mother knows, habits of his”) but also feels a crucial separation – a gap that exists as a physical space, and proves the conflict has frozen or exterminated a part of the speaker’s own humanity.

The difference between these two poems is shorthand for the differences between two periods and two kinds of war poetry. It is also an opportunity to point out that while the Owen poem has been read by millions of schoolchildren in the last 50-odd years, the Douglas poem (which is just as good, if not better) has been read by a handful. By not conforming to the pattern of war poetry laid down between 1914 and 1918 (actually between about 1916 and 1918), it has been sidelined.

The point here is not to discredit poetry of the first world war. As a collective act of witness, made at an extraordinary level of technical skill and with equally extraordinary emotional power, it is in its terrible way magnificent. The point, rather, is to say that our definition of “war poetry” has become too narrow to be accurate or fair. By extending it we are not only able to make a large literary gain – by admiring a much wider range of expertise, thoughtfulness and compassion – but also to appreciate in even more varied and detailed ways the effects of war.

This applies to the first world war itself, if we look away from the frontline and move to the home-front poetry of men in uniform such as Edward Thomas , or women waiting for them such as Eleanor Farjeon . Or to the extraordinary reports by nurses and other volunteers such as Helen Mackay, May Wedderburn Cannan and Margaret Postgate Cole . Or to the visceral and proto-existentialist poems and songs and chants of “Anonymous” (“I don’t want a bayonet up my arsehole, / I don’t want my bollocks shot away”).

A glance across the landscape of war poetry written after 1918 gives an even more dramatic sense of variety. The frontline (in north Africa, then France) brilliantly evoked by Douglas – in his poetry as well as his memoir Alamein to Zem Zem – is just a part of the large picture in which also appears Alun Lewis writing about soldierly boredom and nervous waiting during the second world war, and Dylan Thomas writing about the blitz – and, around them, international voices speaking with and through and over them: Nelly Sachs , Paul Celan , Anna Akhmatova and Tadeusz Różewicz .

As we come towards the present day, our sense of dilation becomes even greater. Not just in the sense that poets have made far-flung wars visible at home ( Yusef Komunyakaa writing about Vietnam, for instance, or Brian Turner about Iraq), but also because the reporting of wars in the media has encouraged non-combatants to address the subject in greater numbers than ever before. This is a difficult business, since it is all too easy to get caught grandstanding, or parading sensitivities, or seeming to aggrandise oneself by associating with a grand subject. But when it is done well it produces poems that earn the right to sit besides those written by people in uniform: Tony Harrison ’s “A Cold Coming” , for example, or James Fenton ’s “Dead Soldiers”.

Before the first world war, war poetry since time immemorial ( The Iliad ) had been largely concerned to celebrate, commend, remember and, yes, grieve. Think of Lord Byron ’s Assyrian, coming down like a wolf on the fold, or Sir John Moore in Charles Wolfe’s poem about the battle of Corunna . Since 1918, like war itself, the poetry of conflict has become a thing of infinite variety, describing apparently infinite tragedy. Yet for all this – which deserves more acknowledgment than it gets – something has stayed the same. The something Owen meant when he spoke about “the pity”.

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8.4: The War Poets

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Learning Objectives

• Understand the effects of World War I on Britain and on the development of Modern literature.
• Recognize the cognitive dissonance caused by accounts of the achievements and victories of the British military and the firsthand accounts of returning individuals and of writers such as the war poets.

No words could describe the general public’s perception of World War I better than the photo essay at the  Modern American Poetry  website (Editors: Cary Nelson and Bartholomew Brinkman. Department of English. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). In the photo essay note the first pictures of men going off to war, women cheering them on, both sides confident in their abilities and confident that the war would be over within a few months followed by increasingly somber pictures of the reality. The ad pictured here capitalized on the widespread belief that British troops, because they were honorable, chivalrous, gallant, would soon march home in victory. The work of soldier poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke informed the British public of the realities of war as much as, perhaps more than, the censored journalistic reports that reached British newspapers and magazines. The brutalities of outdated military tactics used against modern weapons resulted in incomparable  British losses . The war poets painted vivid pictures of the realities of war.

The BBC provides  extensive information about World War I , including virtual tours of the trenches and excerpts from oral histories, diaries, and letters.

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)

Wilfred Owen  was born in Shropshire, a rural area of England. He was interested in poetry, particularly Keats and other Romantic poets, and wrote poetry in his teens. When he failed to be admitted to college, he moved to France to work as an English language tutor. After World War I began, he moved back to England to enlist. In 1917, he was diagnosed with what was then called  shell shock  and sent to Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland for treatment. There he met Siegfried Sassoon. Both poets wrote some of their most well-known poetry while there.  Owen  returned to the front in the fall of 1918, won the Military Cross, and just days before the war ended was killed in battle. His family received the news of his death in the midst of celebrations on November 11, Armistice Day, 1918.

“Dulce et Decorum Est”

The Latin phrase from a work by Homer may be translated “It is sweet and right to die for one’s country.” Juxtaposed against the illusion of war as a glorious adventure, Owen paints the horrors of war’s reality.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori .

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)

Rupert Brooke  also was fond of the works of the Romantic poets. He attended Cambridge University where he met and befriended members of the Bloomsbury Group whose literature was an important piece of British modernism.  Brooke  was commissioned into the Royal Navy, but in 1915 he died of sepsis onboard a hospital ship. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

Rupert Brooke’s grave.

“The Soldier”

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)

Although Sassoon grew up in a family divided by religious differences, his father was Jewish, his mother Roman Catholic, his background provided him enough wealth to live comfortably. He attended Cambridge University for a while, without taking a degree, preferring to live the life of a country gentlemen playing cricket and writing. Sassoon joined the British Army at the beginning of World War I; he was sent home from the front twice, once when he contracted a fever and once for shell shock, this being the occasion when he met Wilfred Owen. Sassoon survived World War I and continued writing until his death.

By George Charles Beresford, 1915

“Glory of Women”

Glory of women.

You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,

Or wounded in a mentionable place.

You worship decorations; you believe

That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.

You make us shells. You listen with delight,

By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.

You crown our distant ardours while we fight,

And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed.

You can’t believe that British troops “retire”

When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run,

Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood.

_O German mother dreaming by the fire,

While you are knitting socks to send your son

His face is trodden deeper in the mud._

In the last three lines, the speaker turns from addressing the people back home in England to speak to the imagined mother of a German soldier. His comment has the effect of humanizing the political enemy.

Key Takeaways

• The staggering casualties and the horrors of modern warfare contributed to the modernist sense that the world lacks a stable, centralizing force and that life lacks ultimate purpose—that the world we live in is, in the words of Thomas Hardy’s character Tess, a “blighted one.”
• The work of the war poets helped enlighten the public about the nature of the war experience.
• In “Dulce Et Decorum Est” the last stanza is directed to people back at home. What is the purpose of this stanza?
• Read this  brief description  of the mustard gas used in World War I. Does Owen’s description seem realistic? Which account seems more emotionally based? Which might have had a more profound effect on the people at home away from the war?
• Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” seems brighter in mood and tone than the other two poems, and yet it describes a soldier’s death. What makes the poem less horrific than “Dulce Et Decorum Est”?
• How would you describe the mood of the speaker in “The Soldier”?
• The speaker of “Glory of Women” expresses disillusionment with the supposed glory of war. How would you describe his attitude toward the women back at home?
• In “Glory of Women,” although the Germans are the enemy of the British, what common human trait does the poet reveal?

General Information

• Anthem for Doomed Youth: Writers and Literature of The Great War, 1914–1918.  An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• The First World War Poetry Digital Archive . University of Oxford and JISC [Joint Information Systems Committee]. text (including biographies, primary texts, background information), images (including portraits, digital images of manuscripts, photos of World War I, images from the Imperial War Museum); audio; video (including a  Second Life Virtual Simulation  from the Imperial War Museum and a  YouTube video introduction , over 150 video clips, film clips), and an interactive timeline.
• “ Home Front: World War One .” British History. BBC.
• “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Wilfred Owen’s ‘ Dulce et Decorum Est .’” Online Gallery. British Library. image of handwritten manuscript and information about Owen and World War I.
• “ World War One .” World Wars.  BBC History .
• Poems by Wilfred Owen with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon . A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication. Pennsylvania State University.
• “ Rupert Brooke, 1887–1915 .” “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) .” Historic Figures. BBC.
• “ Rupert Chawner Brooke .” An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• “ Siegfried Sassoon .” An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• “ Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) .” Historic Figures. BBC.
• “ Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) .” Historic Figures. BBC.
• “ Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) .” “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Wilfred Edward Salter Owen .” An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• “ 1914 V. The Soldier “ by Rupert Brooke.  Representative Poetry Online . Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.
• “ Anthem for Doomed Youth .” by Wilfred Owen. An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. text and a digital image of the original handwritten manuscript.
• “ Dulce et Decorum Est .” by Wilfred Owen . Paul Halsall, Fordham University.  Internet Modern History Sourcebook .
• “ Dulce et Decorum Est .” by Wilfred Owen. “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Glory of Women .” by Siegfred Sassoon.  Counter-Attack and Other Poems . 1918.  Bartleby.com .
• “ Glory of Women .”  The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon .  Project Gutenberg .
• “ Sonnet V. The Soldier .” by Rupert Brooke. “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Wilfred Owen’s ‘ Dulce et Decorum Est .’” Online Gallery. British Library.
• “ World War I Photo Essay .”  Modern American Poetry . Editors: Cary Nelson and Bartholomew Brinkman. Department of English. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• “ Dulce et Decorum Est .” by Wilfred Owen.  LibriVox .
• Extract from a letter by Wilfred Owen, July 1918 . “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Siegfried Sassoon 1886–1967 ). A Recording Owned by Mrs. Olga Ironside Wood. 1 January 1967. BBC.
• “ The Soldier .” by Rupert Brooke.  LibriVox .
• “ Wilfred Owen Audio Gallery .” Dominic Hibberd. World Wars.  BBC History .

An Introduction to English War Poetry

The poet’s career doesn’t end once he dies. The soldier’s career arguably does. The poet-soldier, then, has died physically, but what remains of him is his art. Both Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge managed to create something that transcended their persons and lasted long after being killed in war.

One of the greatest contributions to modern English poetry came through the works that described World War I, in great part because of WWI’s significance on human history. Poetry written by soldiers is one of the best ways to approach literature on the subject, and it will be the focus of this essay to introduce two war poets, one Englishman and one Irishman, who conveyed the sense of being a soldier in the Great War and, in turn, were transformed by this event. Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge were two such poets whose pieces drew upon elements of nature to communicate a soldier’s isolation and his acceptance, even embrace, of imminent death. These two poets were common men, and sometimes within the canon of English and Western literature we may forget that there were talented writers of value even if they did not reach international renown. Many times, it is only through the art of small men that we can understand the impact of the forces that we create and that envelop us as they grow out of control.

Edward Thomas was an English poet born in 1878. He enlisted as a soldier at the age of thirty-seven in 1915 and was killed, after two years of training, on the first day of battle in Arras, France in 1917.[1] Francis Ledwidge, born in 1887, enlisted as a soldier in 1914 at the young age of twenty-seven and was killed three years later in Boezinge, Belgium.[2] Though both of these men wrote several poems inspired by their experiences fighting during the Great War, they were not concerned with the war as a political or controversial topic. In fact, those familiar with war poetry might wonder why I don’t mention better-known WWI poets, like Wilfred Owen. All soldiers were diverse people who understood war differently. Owen had one of the most explicit critiques of war, and I think most of his fame came from that political statement. Take his most famous poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” the message of which can be understood from a first reading:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori .

The poem is moving, no doubt, because it is a true depiction of war. Even in his blunt description of battle, Owen manages to describe death in beautiful verse, “Dim through the misty panes and thick green light / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” (13-14), followed by a nightmarish description of the image that haunts him in his sleep. The moral of the story? It is a lie, that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Owen’s message resonated with many anti-war activists, and this statement is not meant to detract from what is an exceptional poem with intricate literary devices (just read the first two lines out loud! Alliteration, assonance, almost onomatopoeic, making the sound of soldiers marching—amazing). But I do think Owen’s political message has influenced his appreciation as a poet as being more for his message, not for his poetry .

What I prefer about the lesser-known war poets is the humility of their voice, which is more preoccupied with coming to terms with themselves as soldiers, as the helpless victims of circumstance, rather than criticizing the world for what’s happened to them. What Thomas and Ledwidge seemed to understand was that during times of war wherein a soldier found himself lost and alone, it was man’s relationship with himself that took priority over everything else. While the spirit of the soldier who sacrifices himself for others is revered, I do believe that, internally, what took place in the minds of these soldiers was a necessary form of isolation that turned into self-reflection. This excerpt of a letter from Ledwidge to a woman named Katherine conveys a similar sentiment to Owen’s poem, but in a very different tone:

If I survive the war, I have great hopes of writing something that will live. If not, I trust to be remembered in my own land for one or two things which its long sorrow inspired… You ask me what I am doing. I am a unit in the Great War, doing and suffering… I may be dead before this reaches you, but I will have done my part… I am always homesick. I hear the roads calling, and the hills, and the rivers wondering where I am. It is terrible to always be homesick. —Francis Ledwidge, Letter to Katherine Tynan, dated 6 January 1917 .[3]

It is not poetry, of course, but it was written by a poet. Notice how Ledwidge says that if he “survives,” he wants to write something that will “live.” He does not use the word “live” for himself, although we usually say, “if I live.” It is almost as though Ledwidge is recognizing that he’s already lost a part of himself. Ledwidge viewed himself as a “unit,” just going through the motions of what needed to be done. It was not on the battlefield or while doing his duty as a soldier, then, that the individual fighter contemplated himself. Their relationship with the self, then, was the solution to their loneliness and feeling of insignificance.

The machinery used during the Great War meant that infantry combat was only a secondary resource in battle, and this change in weaponry prevented the individual soldier from playing a direct part in this industrialized war.[4] People’s belief in a heroic image of one body of men fighting arm in arm was shattered upon realizing that soldiers were dying undignified and by the thousands. The question then became, what was a singular man’s place amidst such mass destruction? Truly, his identity was overcome by an agglomerate of soldiers who were treated as objects. What “greater” sense of himself could the soldier contribute to a cause devoid of greatness?

For Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge, the way that they contemplated their place and themselves was through their poetry, and nature was an integral part of this relationship because it was a direct way for them to envision home. Since home was seldom in proximity for the soldier, it can be deduced that he often resorted to his immediate surroundings to find comfort and reassurance. Both Thomas and Ledwidge developed this sort of companionship with nature.

Nature’s characteristic as an ongoing duality between life and death, the beauty of creation and destruction, bore resemblance to what they were experiencing on a daily basis, and they perceived it, therefore, as a reflection of their own lives. Thomas and Ledwidge did not solely use nature in their poetry to recount their personal experiences, however, but they also used it to create a space of recognition for the individual faceless soldier as a method of remembrance. They used the symbol of a grave to manifest this sentiment.

The Grave Symbolic for Death and Life

Since there were no number of graves that would suffice for the number of casualties in the Great War, the grave as it was used by these two poets is a symbol for what it represents. In the case of Edward Thomas, the grave as a symbol of remembrance was more important than the physical tombstone. He did not mention graves in his poems, nor did he describe or reference them. Thomas’ focus on the grave was on the writings that would commonly go on the tombstone, and he replicated them in lyrical structure and form in his verses. This elegiac form, often meant for epitaphs, is common in several of his poems.[5] Thomas saw a contrast with epitaphs since they represented what was fixed but also what was transcendent, and he even attributed a literary value to them.[6] An example of such a poem is titled, “In Memoriam (Easter 1915)”:

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will never do again. (1-4)

This poem, written in iambic pentameter with an alternating end-rhyme, is typical of an elegiac stanza, which is a fitting style based on the content of Thomas’ piece since it is a poem of remembrance for the men who left for war and did not return. Nature is immediately invoked when Thomas mentions the flowers “left thick at nightfall in the wood” (1) that should have been gathered by the young soldiers and their sweethearts. Thomas acknowledges that seeing the life of the flowers that have not been picked calls to mind the death of the soldiers: the presence of one thing represents the absence of another.

Thomas used the flower as a symbol of both remembrance and impermanence to recall the past, note the present, and contemplate the future. The importance of nature in the poem might be further stressed upon considering that Thomas used un-plucked flowers in the woods as the main subject. It is only upon seeing the flowers that he is reminded of the dead soldiers. Rather than addressing the dead soldiers directly, Thomas prefers to invoke them through nature even though the poem, as the title expresses, is meant to be an elegy or epitaph of some sort for the men who died in war.

Another poem that expresses this notion of the grave as a point of convergence for death and life is “A Soldier’s Grave” by Francis Ledwidge. It bears some similarity to “In Memoriam (Easter 1915)” since flowers are also mentioned and used as a symbol of remembrance, but the flowers are only secondary to the greater symbol that is the actual earth-grave, which is the main subject of the poem. Here, however, the grave is one with nature, or, rather, the grave is a platform for nature:

And where the earth was soft for flowers we made A grave for him that he might better rest. So, Spring shall come and leave it sweet arrayed, And there the lark shall turn her dewy nest (5-8)

Spring is personified to depict a regenerating force that will decorate the soldier’s grave with different forms of life. A grave was made where “the earth was soft” (5), and spring will use this ground as its stage to grow new flowers and attract birds to lay their nests (8). In the context of this poem, death relieves the soldier from his burdens and even results in beauty and harmony as nature pushes the cycle forward, thus demonstrating that time continues to pass as one life ends by turning the soldier’s resting place into a display of new life. Both poets console the horrors of war with the beauty of nature and portray nature as playing an active role in death and life. By attributing these characteristics to nature, Thomas and Ledwidge are displaying self-awareness in their role as a soldier. They hint, likewise, at their acceptance of death since their poems display a similar disposition towards mortality, where the thought of dying comes no longer as a fear, but as a part of nature.

The Notion of “Passing” as Nature

Francis Ledwidge was able to depict nature as serene and personify it as a force of aid for the dying soldier. We can further analyze his poem “A Soldier’s Grave” and look at the first stanza to corroborate this point:

Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death Lest he should hear again the mad alarms Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath (1-4)

With his opening line, Ledwidge immediately assumes a narrative tone, which serves to calm the reader since the poet sounds like he is telling a pleasant story that is taking place in a tranquil setting, “the lull of midnight” (1). The simple alternating end-rhyme scheme enhances this emotion as each stanza concludes in such a way that sounds complete, and the word-choice (lull, gentle, lifted, slowly) reassures the reader that what is happening to the soldier is a good thing rather than a negative one. In terms of the story that Ledwidge is telling, an unknown entity is introduced whose role is to ease the soldier’s passing and carry him peacefully towards death: But the reader is not told who or what it is; it is simply described as “gentle arms” (1). Though it might be difficult to infer who or what the gentle arms refer to, Ledwidge seems to imply that the entity is a gracious and sympathetic one since it is taking the soldier away from “the mad alarms of battle, dying moans, and painful breath” (3-4).

Francis Ledwidge briefly mentioned the journey from life towards death in “A Soldier’s Grave” when he describes the soldier being lifted down death’s slopes (2). Edward Thomas elaborated on this journey to a greater extent in “Lights Out,” which was written by Thomas in 1916 just before going to war.[7] The poem is about the process of dying, and he describes this gradual passing, which he calls a sleep, by relating it to walking in a forest. The presence of nature here plays a distinct role: It is no longer a kind and sympathetic force as Ledwidge portrayed in his poem; rather, Thomas depicts it as intense and inescapable:

I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

Many a road and track That, since the dawn’s first crack, Up to the forest brink, Deceived the travelers, Suddenly now blurs, And in they sink. (1-12)

Nature, here in the form of a forest, is bottomless; if sleep were a land, Thomas describes the borders of this realm as abysmal since he chooses to break the sentence at a moment where the sentence reads, “I have come to the borders of sleep / The unfathomable deep…” (1-2) It is only after continuing the poem that Thomas reveals a forest that is inevitable; “where all must lose their way, however straight or winding, soon or late; they cannot choose” (3-6). Considering the conditions and timing under which Thomas wrote this poem, prior to going to war and a year before his death, we can assume that Thomas used sleep to refer to death and the forest as a metaphor for the passing. The two symbols of sleep and the forest combined emphasize the inevitability of death since Thomas explains that everyone will eventually succumb to this sleep regardless of the path they take. All the roads and tracks that “deceived” travelers, perhaps into thinking death would not come for them, blur at the forest brink. That forest is a whole wherein they sink: A deep sleep.

Nature, in this respect, has tricked and captured the traveler wandering through the forest, which might cause the reader to view nature as a negative force. The subsequent stanzas, however, rectify this false assumption as Thomas defends the forest as being a neutral place where all emotion is distilled and where the traveler can rid himself of all earthly cares:

Here love ends, Despair, ambition ends; All pleasure and all trouble, Although most sweet or bitter, Here ends in sleep that is sweeter Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book Or face of dearest look That I would not turn from now To go into the unknown I must enter, and leave, alone, I know now how. (13-24)

It is interesting to note that Thomas describes death as neither good nor bad: both pleasure and trouble end, both love and despair (1-3). The fourth stanza in the poem indicates a type of personal relief in death that is incomparable to any worldly joy. “Face” (20) in this context represents any family or friend that would normally keep Thomas from dying, while “book” (19) might be a symbol for any moral, intellectual, or philosophical code of ethics that might make a man believe that it is better to continue living. Alternatively, it could be a metaphorical representation of literature and of Thomas’ potential career as a literary figure, since he was a well-reputed writer and book reviewer before he enlisted in the army. Thomas determines, nonetheless, that neither will stop him from entering the unknown.

In the fifth and final stanza of the poem, Thomas returns to his nature imagery and completes a cycle not only in the mechanical structure of the poem as he brings back the image of the forest, but also in a metaphorical sense since he concludes by expressing the embrace of death as a release from the self and a unification with nature:

The tall forest towers; Its cloudy foliage lowers Ahead, shelf above shelf; Its silence I hear and obey That I may lose my way And myself. (25-30)

There is a clear contradiction when Thomas states that he is able to “hear” (28) the forest’s silence and that this absence of sound is what persuades him to obey it. It is as though the forest did not need to do anything to convince Thomas to comply; rather, the impulse to follow it comes intuitively and subconsciously. While the forest seems to overpower Thomas as “its cloudy foliage lowers” (26) over him and beckons him to venture deeper, Thomas simultaneously displays free will and choice by acknowledging the fact that in so doing he will lose his path in the forest and ultimately himself (30). The facts that Thomas senses an invitation from the forest, that he understands what he must do without the need for an audible command or signal, and that he is well aware of the consequences, serve to support the idea that he views passing to be almost instinctive and part of nature.

By placing such an emphasis on dying while concurrently using nature as a metaphor and analogy to describe the process, Thomas and Ledwidge affirm an instinctual connection between their deaths and their environment. For both of these poets, the transience of nature was a way to understand and justify their role as a soldier likely to die at any moment. Thomas’ poem opens the important subject of English WWI poetry: the self.

The “Self” and Individual Life

Although the previous poems might insinuate that Thomas and Ledwidge had accepting dispositions towards death, they wrote other poems on the matter that conflicted with the notion of them having one view of death. The thought of death might have served as alleviation for these poets, but it did not resolve many questions in regard to their place amidst the Great War, after all. Their poetry was the attempt to validate the life and death of the soldier more than it was an outward critique on war. Thomas and Ledwidge placed a heavy importance on the “self” and the individual life of the soldier as he lived and suffered the war, for this experience tremendously affected his perception of the world, of life, and of death. From the traumatizing events that they endured, an existential question correspondingly arose and troubled the soldier’s mind: were his efforts and his death justified? Would he ever have recompense for his efforts, even after death? Francis Ledwidge addressed these questions in one of his most famous poems, “Lament for Thomas MacDonagh.” MacDonagh was a revolutionary leader during the 1916 Easter Rising who was executed by the British Army.[8] Ledwidge wrote a poem in his honor where he revealed his thoughts on the individual who sacrificed his life and died for a greater cause:

He shall not hear the bittern cry In the wild sky where he is lain Nor voices of the sweeter birds Above the wailing of the rain

Nor shall he know when loud March blows Thro’ slanting snows his fanfare shrill Blowing to flame the golden cup Of many an upset daffodil (1-8)

The opening stanza bears some resemblance to Thomas’ poem, “Lights Out” in the sense that Ledwidge is describing death indifferently as a state of neither pain nor happiness: Ledwidge states that MacDonagh will hear neither “the bittern cry” (1) nor the sounds of “the sweeter birds” (3). MacDonagh, moreover, will not be able to witness the winter: “Nor shall he know when loud March blows / Thro’ slanting snows his fanfare shrill” (5-6). Ledwidge strengthens this sentiment by using words like “wild” (2) to describe the sky, and the winter and the rain as cacophonous with their “wailing” (4) and “shrill” (6). This desolate landscape depicts nature as harsh, destructive, and violent as the winter “blows to flame” (7) the golden cups of daffodils.

The first two stanzas paint a bleak landscape to reflect how Ledwidge feels about the death of Thomas MacDonagh as he uses words such as “upset” (8) and “bittern” (1) to further emphasize his discontent. Through these statements, Ledwidge addresses the existential question of the life and soul of a man after death, but he seems to lean towards the opinion that MacDonagh is completely gone. It isn’t until the third stanza that Ledwidge introduces a hesitation, providing an optimistic and alternative view to MacDonagh’s untimely death:

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor And pastures poor with greedy weeds Perhaps he’ll hear her low at morn Lifting her horns in pleasant meads (8-12)

Ledwidge continues to describe the landscape in a negative form, “pastures poor with greedy weeds” (9). This adjective choice for the weeds implies that there is some sort of corruption occurring on this field, which perhaps is a reference to the political instability occurring in Ireland at the time of the Easter Rebellion, since it was during this event that MacDonagh died (again, history is vital for good poetry writing and study). This negative landscape is reconciled once Ledwidge inserts an important shift by introducing the Dark Cow leaving this field. The “Dark Cow” (8) that Ledwidge foresees eventually leaving the moor is turned into a proper noun, which supports the idea that the cow is a metaphor for his country and Ledwidge’s way of optimistically expressing the possibility of Ireland overcoming its tumultuous state.

The most important lines in the poem are the final two where Ledwidge readdresses the question of MacDonagh’s death by considering the possibility that, if and once Ireland overcomes its strife, MacDonagh will be able to see (even from beyond the grave) his country prosper once again. Ledwidge achieves this optimistic shift by using the key word “perhaps” (11) to state that MacDonagh will be able to hear the Dark Cow (that is, Ireland) and see her “lifting her horns in pleasant meads” (12), an image of triumph and pride. This gesture that Ledwidge attributes to the cow not only reveals his hopes for Ireland, but also his feelings towards MacDonagh’s death: By being able to hear the cow upon lifting her horns, MacDonagh’s senses are restored and his memory, therefore, brought back to life.

Ledwidge’s interest in the soul of Thomas MacDonagh reveals his own personal curiosity regarding the soul of the individual before and after death. Edward Thomas also addressed this issue in his poem, “Rain,” by questioning this same subject and placing emphasis on the senses to express the possibility of the self ceasing to exist after death:

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into solitude. (1-6)

The prominence and repetition of the word “rain” in the first line replicates the rhythm of raindrops, which implies that Thomas is actively listening to the rain and is therefore in a state of deep contemplation. The third line of the poem reveals that Thomas is thinking about his death; yet, it is not his death that is troubling him, but rather the notion of losing his senses and, therefore, of losing himself.

Francis Ledwidge wrote a similar poem titled “Soliloquy,” in which he assesses the importance of being a soldier and the probability of dying. The poem opens with a reflection on his youth and progresses chronologically with him through the years. The third stanza is the break in the poem where his thoughts come back to the present moment:

And now I’m drinking wine in France, The helpless child of circumstance. Tomorrow will be loud with war, How will I be accounted for? (15-18)

By questioning what will happen if he dies, Ledwidge acknowledges the risk he runs of potentially being killed; yet, in the last stanza of his poem, he seems to dispose of this worry by glorifying himself as a soldier:

It is too late now to retrieve A fallen dream, too late to grieve A name unmade, but not too late To thank the gods for what is great; A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart, Is greater than a poet’s art. And greater than a poet’s fame A little grave that has no name. (19-26)

Ledwidge refers to himself indirectly when he states, “A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart / Is greater than a poet’s art” (23-24). He adds, “And greater than a poet’s fame” (25) is “a little grave that has no name” (26). This statement seems to contradict the aforementioned letter he sent to Katherine Tynan expressing how he hoped to live and become a great poet. Is he being sarcastic? It is difficult to say.

Within these poems, Thomas and Ledwidge make clear that their words are more than a mere expression of observations and recounting of events as soldiers in the Great War. Their quest was more profound, directed inwards towards themselves and less directed towards their audience.

The Great Grave

The poet’s career doesn’t end once he dies. The soldier’s career arguably does. The poet-soldier, then, has died physically, but what remains of him (as Ledwidge noted in his letter) is his art. There was, however, a certain inhumanity about the way soldiers’ deaths were regarded.

Since both poets managed to create something that transcended their persons and lasted long after being killed in war, their absence was not necessarily detrimental to the poetry itself. But what of that part of them that was a mere soldier, a unit in the war? The day that Ledwidge was killed, for example, the chaplain recorded his death as follows:

Crowds at Holy Communion. Arrange for service but washed out by rain and fatigues. Walk in rain with dogs. Ledwidge killed, blown to bits; at Confession yesterday and Mass and Holy Communion this morning. R.I.P.[9]

Ledwidge’s collection of poems titled “Songs of Peace” was published in September 1916, three months after his death, under the description of a “Soldier Poet Fallen in the War.”[10] This image rendered him as an epitome of the brave soldier, and it seems that the soldier brand stuck with him more than the poet part. But although this image was a kind way of portraying him to a greater cause—the fallen soldier—it set aside Francis Ledwidge’s identity as an individual who experienced the world (or which war was the last part). A contemporary poet at the time, John Drinkwater, was one of the few who refuted how Ledwidge’s death was portrayed to people, which he believed to be insulting. In regards to Ledwidge’s death, he wrote:

The continual insistence, not that his devotion is splendid, but that it is upon us that his devotion may splendidly bestow itself, is contemptible… his poetry exults me, while not so his death. And it is well for us to keep our minds fixed on this plain fact, that when he died, a poet was not transfigured, but killed, and his poetry was not magnified, but blasted in its first flowering.[11]

As Drinkwater observed, death, despite being a source of influence for many of his poems, managed to abruptly halt what would have been a promising career for Ledwidge. This is a problem that is difficult to overcome: What role does strife play for the artist? Pain and suffering may help him develop his art, but at what cost? Although he enlisted voluntarily, the setting in which he died was artificially created; the way his death was recorded, almost absurd.

There are only some of the questions that come to me when I read war poetry, but it is a great genre in poetry that merits more study beyond this (very short) introduction. The most fitting way to conclude this essay is with one more poem by Ledwidge. The bucolic poem, “Behind The Closed Eye,” describes what Ledwidge understood to be his personal encounter with death: A return home, to Ireland.

I walk the old frequented ways That wind around the tangled braes, I live again the sunny days Ere I the city knew.

And scenes of old again are born, The woodbine lassoing the thorn, And drooping Ruth-like in the corn The poppies weep the dew.

Above me in their hundred schools The magpies bend their young to rules, And like an apron full of jewels The dewy cobweb swings.

And frisking in the stream below The troutlets make the circles flow, And the hungry crane doth watch them grow As a smoker does his rings.

Above me smokes the little town, With its whitewashed walls and roofs of brown And its octagon spire toned smoothly down As the holy minds within.

And wondrous impudently sweet, Half of him passion, half conceit, The blackbird calls adown the street Like the piper of Hamelin.

I hear him, and I feel the lure Drawing me back to the homely moor, I’ll go and close the mountains’ door On the city’s strife and din.

The Imaginative Conservative  applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider  donating now .

1 Biography of Edward Thomas by Poets.org .

2 Francis Ledwidge Museum .

3 Alice Curtayne, Francis Ledwidge, A Life of the Poet , (Dublin: New Island Books, 1998.) 170.

4 Helen B. McCartney, “The First World War Soldier and his contemporary image in Britain,” International Affairs , Feb. 2014: 299.

5 Move Him Into the Sun .

6 Judy Kendall, Edward Thomas: Origins of His Poetry (LLandybïe: University of Wales Press, 2012), 57.

7 Wojciech Klepuszewski, “ ‘Lights Out’: Edward Thomas on the Way to War ,” Revue LISA/LISA e-journal , Mar. 2012, 69-82.

8 Thomas Macdonagh Heritage Centre

9 Alice Curtayne, Francis Ledwidge, A Life of the Poet (Dublin: New Island Books, 1998) 188.

10 Ibid. 190.

11 Ibid. 191.

Editor’s note: The featured image is a battle scene which depicts the bravery of Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated United States Army soldiers of World War I, (1919 ) by Frank Schoonover (1877-1972), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons .

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Great War Poems

From antiquity through the nuclear age, poets respond to human conflict

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War poems capture the darkest moments in human history, and also the most luminous. From ancient texts to modern free verse, war poetry explores a range of experiences, celebrating victories, honoring the fallen, mourning losses, reporting atrocities, and rebelling against those who turn a blind eye.  

The most famous war poems are memorized by school children, recited at military events, and set to music. However, great war poetry reaches far beyond the ceremonial. Some of the most remarkable war poems defy expectations of what a poem "ought" to be. The war poems listed here include the familiar, the surprising, and the disturbing. These poems are remembered for their lyricism, their insights, their power to inspire, and their role chronicling historic events.

War Poems from Ancient Times

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The earliest recorded war poetry is thought to be by Enheduanna, a priestess from Sumer, the ancient land that is now Iraq. In about 2300 BCE, she riled against war, writing:

You are blood rushing down a mountain, Spirit of hate, greed and anger, dominator of heaven and earth!

At least a millennium later, the Greek poet (or group of poets) known as Homer composed  The Illiad , an  epic poem  about a war that destroyed "great fighters' souls" and "made their bodies carrion, / feasts for the dogs and birds."

The celebrated Chinese poet  Li Po  (also known as Rihaku, Li Bai, Li Pai, Li T’ai-po, and Li T’ai-pai) raged against battles he viewed as brutal and absurd. " Nefarious War ," written in 750 AD, reads like a modern-day protest poem: 

men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass, And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Writing in Old English , an unknown Anglo Saxon poet described warriors brandishing swords and clashing shields in the " Battle of Maldon ," which chronicled a war fought 991 AD. The poem articulated a code of heroism and nationalist spirit that dominated war literature in the Western world for a thousand years.

Even during the enormous global wars of the 20th century, many poets echoed medieval ideals, celebrating military triumphs and glorifying fallen soldiers.

Patriotic War Poems

When soldiers head to war or return home victorious, they march to a rousing beat. With decisive meter and stirring refrains, patriotic war poems are designed to celebrate and inspire.

“ The Charge of the Light Brigade ” by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) bounces with the unforgettable chant, “Half a league, half a league, / Half a league onward.” 

American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) wrote " Concord Hymn " for an Independence Day celebration. A choir sang his rousing lines about "the shot heard round the world” to the popular tune "Old Hundredth."

Melodic and rhythmic war poems are often the basis for songs and anthems. " Rule, Britannia! ” began as a poem by James Thomson (1700–1748). Thomson ended each stanza with the spirited cry, "Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; / Britons never will be slaves." Sung to music by Thomas Arne, the poem became standard fare at British military celebrations.  

American poet  Julia Ward Howe  (1819-1910) filled her Civil War poem, “ Battle Hymn of the Republic ,” with heart-thumping cadences and Biblical references. The Union army sang the words to the tune of the song, “John Brown’s Body.” Howe wrote many other poems, but the Battle-Hymn made her famous.

Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) was an attorney and amateur poet who penned the words that became the United States national anthem. “The Star-Spangled Banner” does not have the hand clapping rhythm of Howe’s “Battle-Hymn,” but Key expressed soaring emotions as he observed a brutal battle during the War of 1812 . With lines that end with rising inflection (making the lyrics notoriously difficult to sing), the poem describes “bombs bursting in air” and celebrates America’s victory over British forces.

Originally titled “The Defence of Fort McHenry,” the words (shown above) were set to a variety of tunes. Congress adopted an official version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as America's anthem in 1931.

Soldier Poets

Historically, poets were not soldiers. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Butler Yeats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling suffered losses, but never participated in armed conflict themselves. With very few exceptions, the most memorable war poems in the English language were composed by classically-trained writers who observed war from a position of safety.

However, World War I  brought a flood of new poetry by soldiers who wrote from the trenches. Enormous in scope, the global conflict stirred a tidal wave of patriotism and an unprecedented call to arms.Talented and well-read young people from all walks of life went to the front lines. 

Some World War I soldier poets romanticized their lives on the battlefield, writing poems so touching they were set to music. Before he sickened and died on a navy ship, English poet  Rupert Brooke  (1887-1915) wrote tender  sonnets  like " The Soldier ." The words became the song, "If I Should Die":

If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.

American poet Alan Seeger (1888–1916), who was killed in action serving the French Foreign Legion, imagined a metaphorical “ Rendezvous with Death ”: 

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air—

Canadian John McCrae (1872–1918) commemorated the war dead and called for survivors to continue the fight. His poem, In Flanders Fields , concludes:   

If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

Other soldier poets rejected romanticism . The early 20th century brought the Modernism movement when many writers broke from traditional forms. Poets experimented with plain-spoken language, gritty realism, and imagism .  

British poet  Wilfred Owen  (1893-1918), who died in battle at age 25, did not spare the shocking details. In his poem, “ Dulce et Decorum Est ,” soldiers trudge through sludge after a gas attack. A body is flung onto a cart, “white eyes writhing in his face.”

“My subject is War, and the pity of War,” Owen wrote in the preface to his collection.“The Poetry is in the pity.”

Another British soldier, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), wrote angrily and often satirically about War War I and those who supported it. His poem “ Attack ” opens with a rhyming couplet:

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun, and concludes with the outburst: O Jesus, make it stop!

Whether glorifying war or reviling it, soldier poets often discovered their voices in the trenches. Struggling with mental illness, British composer  Ivor Gurney  (1890-1937) believed that World War I and camaraderie with fellow soldiers made him a poet. In " Photographs ," as in many of his poems, the tone is both grim and exultant:

Lying in dug-outs, hearing the great shells slow Sailing mile-high, the heart mounts higher and sings.

The soldier poets of World War I changed the literary landscape and established war poetry as a new genre for the modern era. Combining personal narrative with free verse and vernacular language, veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and other  20th century battles and wars  continued to report on trauma and unbearable losses. 

To explore the enormous body of work by soldier poets, visit the  War Poets Association  and the  The First World War Poetry Digital Archive . 

Poetry of Witness

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American poet Carolyn Forché (b. 1950) coined the term  poetry of witness  to describe painful writings by men and women who endured war, imprisonment, exile, repression, and human rights violations. Poetry of witness focuses on human anguish rather than national pride. These poems are apolitical, yet deeply concerned with social causes. 

While traveling with Amnesty International, Forché witnessed the outbreak of civil war in El Salvador . Her prose poem, " The Colonel ," draws a surreal picture of a real encounter:

He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there.

Although the term “poetry of witness” has recently stirred keen interest, the concept is not new.  Plato wrote that it is the poet's obligation to bear witness, and there have always been poets who recorded their personal perspectives on war.

Walt Whitman  (1819–1892) documented horrifying details from the American Civil War, where he served as a nurse to more than 80,000 sick and wounded. In " The Wound-Dresser " from his collection,  Drum-Taps,  Whitman wrote:

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood…

Traveling as a diplomat and an exile, Chilean poet  Pablo Neruda  (1904-1973) became known for his gruesome yet lyrical poetry about the "pus and pestilence" of the Civil War in Spain.

Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps documented their experiences on scraps that were later found and published in journals and anthologies.The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum maintains an exhaustive index of resources for reading poems by holocaust victims .

Poetry of witness knows no boundaries. Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Shoda Shinoe (1910-1965) wrote poems about the devastation of the atomic bomb. Croatian poet  Mario Susko  (1941- ) draws images from the war in his native Bosnia. In " The Iraqi Nights ," poet Dunya Mikhail (1965- ) personifies war as an individual who moves through life stages. 

Websites like Voices in Wartime and the War Poetry Website have an outpouring of first-hand accounts from many other writers, including poets impacted by war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, and Palestine.

Anti-War Poetry

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When soldiers, veterans, and war victims expose disturbing realities, their poetry becomes a social movement and an outcry against military conflicts. War poetry and poetry of witness move into the realm of anti -war poetry.

The Vietnam War and military action in Iraq were widely protested in the United States. A group of American veterans wrote candid reports of unimaginable horrors. In his poem, " Camouflaging the Chimera ," Yusef Komunyakaa (1947- ) depicted a nightmarish scene of jungle warfare: ​

In our way station of shadows rock apes tried to blow our cover, throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons crawled our spines, changing from day to night: green to gold, gold to black. But we waited till the moon touched metal...

Brian Turner's (1967- ) poem " The Hurt Locker " chronicled chilling lessons from Iraq:  

Nothing but hurt left here. Nothing but bullets and pain... Believe it when you see it. Believe it when a twelve-year-old rolls a grenade into the room.

Vietnam veteran Ilya Kaminsky (1977- ) wrote a scathing indictment of American apathy in " We Lived Happily During the War ": 

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

During the 1960s, the  prominent feminist poets  Denise Levertov (1923-1997) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) mobilized top-name artists and writers for exhibitions and proclamations against the Vietnam War. Poets Robert Bly (1926- ) and David Ray (1932- ) organized anti-war rallies and events that drew  Allen Ginsberg ,  Adrienne Rich ,  Grace Paley , and many other famous writers. 

Protesting American actions in Iraq, Poets Against the War launched in 2003 with a poetry reading at the White House gates. The event inspired a global movement that included poetry recitations, a documentary film, and a website with writing by more than 13,000 poets.

Unlike  historical poetry of protest and revolution , contemporary anti-war poetry embraces writers from a broad spectrum of cultural, religious, educational, and ethnic backgrounds. Poems and video recordings posted on social media provide multiple perspectives on the experience and impact of war. By responding to war with unflinching detail and raw emotion, poets around the world find strength in their collective voices. 

Sources and Further Reading

•  ​Barrett, Faith. To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave : American Poetry and the Civil War. University of Massachusetts Press.  Oct. 2012.
• Deutsch, Abigail. “100 Years of Poetry: The Magazine and War.” Poetry magazine. 11 Dec. 2012. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69902/100-years-of-poetry-the-magazine-and-war
• Duffy, Carol Ann. “Exit wounds.” The Guardian . 24 Jul 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/25/war-poetry-carol-ann-duffy
• Emily Dickinson Museum. “Emily Dickinson and the Civil War.” https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/civil_war
• Forché, Carolyn. “Not Persuasion, But Transport: The Poetry of Witness.” The Blaney Lecture, presented at Poets Forum in New York City. 25 Oct. 2013. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/not-persuasion-transport-poetry-witness
• Forché, Carolyn and Duncan Wu, editors. Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500 – 2001. W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition. 27 Jan. 2014.
• Gutman, Huck.  "Drum-Taps," essay in Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia . J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998. https://whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_83.html
• Hamill, Sam; Sally Anderson; et. al., editors. Poets Against the War . Nation Books. First Edition. 1 May 2003.
• King, Rick, et. al.  Voices in Wartime . Documentary Film:  http://voicesinwartime.org/ Print anthology: http://voicesinwartime.org/voices-wartime-anthology
• Melicharova, Margaret. "Century of Poetry and War." Peace Pledge Union. http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/poetry/​
• Poets and War .  http://www.poetsandwar.com/
• Richards, Anthony. "How First World War poetry painted a truer picture." The Telegraph . 28 Feb 2014. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/inside-first-world-war/part-seven/10667204/first-world-war-poetry-sassoon.html
• Roberts, David, Editor. War “Poems and Poets of Today.”  The War Poetry Website. 1999. http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/modernwarpoetry.htm
• Stallworthy, Jon. The New Oxford Book of War Poetry . Oxford University Press; 2nd edition. 4 Feb. 2016.
• University of Oxford. The First World War Poetry Digital Archive. http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/
• War Poets Association.  http://www.warpoets.org/

FAST FACTS: 45 Great Poems About War

• All the Dead Soldiers by Thomas McGrath (1916–1990)
• Armistice by Sophie Jewett (1861–1909) 
• Attack by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) 
• Battle Hymn of the Republic  (original published version) by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
• Battle of Maldon  by anonymous, written in Old English and translated by Jonathan A. Glenn 
• Beat! Beat! Drums! by Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
• Camouflaging the Chimera by Yusef Komunyakaa (1947- ) 
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
• City That Does Not Sleep by Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), translated by Robert Bly
• The Colonel by Carolyn Forché (1950- )
• Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
• The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)
• The Dictators by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), translated by Ben Belitt  
• Driving through Minnesota during the Hanoi Bombings by Robert Bly (1926- )
• Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
• Dulce et Decorum Est  by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) 
• Elegy for a Cave Full of Bones by John Ciardi (1916–1986)
• Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa (1947- )
• First They Came For The Jews  by Martin Niemöller
• The Hurt Locker by Brian Turner (1967- ) 
• I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger (1888–1916) 
• The Iliad  by Homer (circa 9th or 8th century BCE), translated by Samuel Butler 
• In Flanders Fields  by John McCrae (1872-1918)
• The Iraqi Nights  by Dunya Mikhail (1965- ), translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid 
• An Irish Airman foresees his Death by William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
• I Sit and Sew by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935) 
• It Feels A Shame To Be Alive by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
• July 4th by May Swenson (1913–1989)
• The Kill School  by Frances Richey (1950- ) 
• Lament to the Spirit of War by Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE)
• LAMENTA: 423 by Myung Mi Kim (1957- )
• The Last Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), translated by Walter Kaschner
• Life at War by Denise Levertov (1923–1997)
• MCMXIV by Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
• Mother and Poet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)  
• Nefarious War by Li Po (701–762), translated by Shigeyoshi Obata
• A Piece of Sky Without Bombs by Lam Thi My Da (1949- ), translated by Ngo Vinh Hai and Kevin Bowen
• Rule, Britannia! by James Thomson (1700–1748) 
• The Soldier  by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
• The Star-Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)
• Tankas by Shoda Shinoe (1910-1965) 
• We Lived Happily During the War by Ilya Kaminsky (1977- )
• Weep by George Moses Horton (1798–1883)  
• The Wound-Dresser from Drum-Taps by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 
• What the End Is For by Jorie Graham (1950- )  
• Biography of Walt Whitman, American Poet
• Walt Whitman and the Civil War
• Patriotic Poems for Independence Day
• A Classic Collection of Bird Poems
• Biography of Wilfred Owen, a Poet in Wartime
• Biography of Hilda Doolittle, Poet, Translator, and Memoirist
• Rupert Brooke: Poet-Soldier
• Feminist Poetry Movement of the 1960s
• 15 Classic Poems for the New Year
• Julia Ward Howe Biography
• Notable Authors of the 19th Century
• What Is Poetry, and How Is It Different?
• Poems of War and Remembrance
• 14 Classic Poems Everyone Should Know
• Poems of Protest and Revolution

Literary Matters

The Literary Magazine of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

War Poetry, Political Poetry, and The Invisible Powers

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“The problem for a poet in writing about modern war is that, while he can only deal with events of which he has first hand knowledge—invention, however imaginative, is bound to be fake—his poems must somehow transcend mere journalistic reportage. In a work of art, the single event must be seen as an element in a universally significant pattern: the area of the pattern actually illuminated by the artist’s vision is always, more or less limited, but one is aware of its extending beyond what we see far into time and space.”

–W.H.Auden, preface to the first edition of Lincoln Kirstein’s Rhymes of a Pfc.

“The proper subjects for poetry are love, virtue, and war.”

–Dante Alighieri, De Eloquentia Vulgari , 1304

“Now you are in a new world, the world of invisible powers, the world of literature, of poem and story.”

 –Mona Van Duyn, “Matters of Poetry”, (1993)

One day in Hanoi, where our Nôm Foundation was working at the National Library to digitize its several thousand ancient texts, I took a day off to visit the ancient Temple of Literature, founded in 1076 after the Vietnamese had finally driven out their Chinese overlords.  Until 1919 when the Temple’s function ended under the French, this was the academy where Vietnam trained its governing elite in poetry, history, and philosophy, selecting gifted students from all social classes in the belief that a mind trained and tested in such subjects is a quick, sharp, and careful mind, and that such minds are important resources to the nation.

One enters the Temple grounds through a large stone gate topped with recoiling dragons indicating royal rule and its mandate from heaven.  One then proceeds past gardens and ponds through another large gateway under a tile-roofed balcony where, over the centuries, new graduates  declaimed their poetry. Perhaps the most striking thing one then sees are rows of 6-foot stone blocks standing on the backs of massive stone turtles.  On these blocks are carved the names of those who graduated from the Temple and entered Vietnam’s civil service. Even today, hundreds of years after these graduates served the nation, one can see their descendants lighting incense sticks and placing them before those stone blocks in familial veneration.

Further on, in a room inside the Temple itself, there is a square stone carved in Chinese characters and next to it translations into modern Vietnamese and in English, which read as follows:

Virtuous and talented men are state sustaining elements. The strength and prosperity of a state depend on it[s] stable vitality and it becomes weaker as such vitality fails.  That is why all the saint emperors and clear-sighted kings didn’t fail in seeing to the formation of men of talent and the employment of literati to develop this vitality.

–Examination Stele, Đai Bảo Dynasty, Third Year (1442).

Literati?  Literary people as “state sustaining elements”? How on earth, we Americans might ask, can citizens trained in literary skills be “state-sustaining elements”?  Why would the Vietnamese royal court set up a university for its best and brightest, regardless of class or wealth, and then train them largely in poetry, history, and philosophy?

If that seems a little far-fetched, consider this: Confucius, the Chinese philosopher to whom the Vietnamese Temple of Literature is dedicated along with the Duke of Chou (this after the Chinese were finally driven out) was once asked the perennial philosophic question of 4th century China—as it was the perennial question for Socrates in Plato’s The Republic —“what would you first do if allowed to rule a kingdom?”  Confucius’ reply, as recorded in his Analects , was: “to correct language.”  Because, he said, if language is not precise, “then what is meant cannot be effected. If what is meant cannot be effected, society falls apart.”

The useful application of the Confucian reply to our affairs today must be obvious. Here is the exchange from Book XIII of the Analects , written around 400 BC.

Tzu-lu said, “If the prince of Wei were waiting for you to come and administer his country for him, what would be your first measure?”

The Master said, “It would certainly be to correct language.”

Tzu-Lu said, “Did I hear you right? Surely what you say has nothing to do with the matter. Why should language be corrected?” 1

The Master said, “Lu! How simple you are! A gentleman, when things he does not understand are mentioned, should maintain an attitude of reserve. If language is incorrect, then what is said does not concord with what was meant; and if what is said does not concord with what was meant, what is to be done cannot be effected. If what is to be done cannot be effected, then society falls apart.”

Such precision in the use of words is of course a lifelong pleasure in-and-of itself, but it has immense practical value as well. Without such precision in the way we communicate with ourselves, with ourselves as a society, and with the world beyond, our private and public affairs falter and fall apart.  Precision in the use of words is the talent which lends all other professions and skills their usefulness. It is a skill which goes beyond utilitarian technology.  Such precision in speech, writing, and the reading of complex works of the human imagination brings to its practitioners and to their societies a more enriched sense of self and an inevitable moral expansion.

This skill, most notably found in poetry, is indeed “a state-sustaining endeavor.”  It is no mere curiosity that from Vietnam’s earliest nationhood its rulers and foreign emissaries were always known poets.  The 18th century ambassador to China, Nguyễn Du, decorated by his emperor as a “pillar of the nation,” is also Vietnam’s most famous poet. In modern times, Ho Chi Minh wrote quite good poetry in Vietnamese and in Chinese.  The North Vietnamese Head of Delegation to the 1973 Paris Peace Talks was Xuân Thủy, known first as a poet.

Traditionally, the chief poetic vehicle for study and composition, was the “regulated” lü-shih verse form made classic by the Chinese master Tu Fu in the 8th century, and called th ơ đ ườ ng lu ậ t in Vietnamese.  It is always eight lines, seven syllables to a line, rhyming usually on the first, second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines, and requiring syntactic parallel structure in the middle four. For several East Asian societies it became the main lyric vehicle for centuries, serving them in the way the sonnet served the West.  This form—whether written in Vietnamese or in Chinese—streamed with history and culture in generations of individuals possessing “bright mind.” As the stone tablet suggests, the strength and prosperity of a state depend on its stable vitality created by men and women who are trained to inquire, sharpen their minds, and expand their souls by an active engagement, we would say, with “the best words in the best order,” as Coleridge defined poetry in 1835 in his Table Talk .

This notion of poetry’s affecting voice resulting in moral action, is increasingly foreign to us. The idea that a poem can change political events probably seems to us quaint if not preposterous.  Yet, even today, Vietnamese will gamble on a person’s ability to aptly end a poem, and political debates can be won by an appropriate poetic quotation.  Indeed, legend has it that a Chinese invasion was once turned back by the poem below, supposedly painted on banana leaves and eaten by ants, the resulting poem causing panic in the invading troops.  Whether this really happened isn’t as significant as the legend itself and its existence in popular belief:

 南 國 山 河 南 帝 居  Our mountains and rivers belong to the Southern Ruler.

截 然 定 分 在 天 書  This is written in the Celestial Book.

如 何 逆 虜 來 侵 犯  Those who try to conquer this land

汝 等 行 看 取 敗 虚  Will surely suffer defeat.  

–Marshall Lý Thường Kiệt (1019-1105)

One is reminded in our more recent times of poetry’s ability to change human events by George Washington’s decision, on December 26, 1776, on the eve of his attack on Trenton–as his flotilla of farmers prepared their crossing of the Delaware, in the night, in a blizzard– to assemble his troops to hear a reading of Thomas Paine’s just-published poetic essay regarding “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.”  Their subsequent attack, and perhaps that reading, changed the course of the war.

Christmas Eve at Washington’s Crossing

Out on the freezing Delaware, ice sheets bob the surface, breaking against granite pilings of the colonial river inn swept by winter storm.

Gusts of snow blow off a sandbar and sink in plunging currents where a line of ducks paddle hard against the blizzard

as cornfields on the Jersey banks are whisked into bits of stalks and broken sheaves spinning in the squalls.

This is where, one such Christmas night, the tall courtly general with bad teeth risked his neck and his rebels to cross the storming river and rout the Hessians.

What made them think they could succeed?…farmers mostly, leaving homesteads to load cannon into Durham boats

to row into the snowstorm, then march all night to Trenton, saving the Republic for Valley Forge and victory at Yorktown.

Before crossing, legend says, they assembled in the snow to hear Paine’s new essay about summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.

What words could call us all together now? On what riverbank? For what common good would we abandon all?

2 But what about the success of political poetry today including, say, the Joseph Biden inaugural poem written by Amanda Gorman?  Why do some poems stay alive in us, while others never even take hold?  Some poems disappear as their immediate events fade from memory.  But why do others endure?  And why do a handful of poems referring to politics or war take hold when most are immediately forgotten?  Do poems based in the shocks of warfare or in popular political sentiment belong to a different category of aesthetics?

In a letter to me in Vietnam in 1968, in response to some poems I had mailed him, my former teacher, novelist John Barth wrote:

The poems get it said, even to me, who do not find very much war poetry successful if it has more than one topical proper name in it.  Most of Lowell’s and Bly’s & Who-Have-You’s Vietnam verse, sincere as its horrification and indignation is, will fare as badly as Karl Shapiro’s V-Letter poems, I believe, once the bloody war is over and the verses have to survive on their excellence alone.

Nonetheless, Randall Jarrell, writing in his Fifty Years of American Poetry , said this about Shapiro’s style in his war poems:  “Karl Shapiro’s poems are fresh and young and rash and live; their hard clear outlines, their flat bold colors create a world like that of a knowing and skillful neoprimitive painting, without any of the confusion or profundity of atmosphere, of aerial perspective, but with notable visual and satiric force.”  “Neoprimitive”…”without any of the confusion or profundity of atmosphere.”  Not much of in the way praise.

During WW II, Shapiro was stationed as a military clerk in Australia and New Guinea. (Perhaps a poet’s proximity or distance from the battlefield is one factor in a war poem’s success, even for accomplished, established poets like Robert Lowell.) Indeed, in the 2014 edition of his centuries-spanning collection of The New Oxford Book of War Poetry , Jon Stallworthy writes that “the charge against a poem like Lowell’s ‘Women, Children, Babies, Cows, Cats’ is that, far from shocking an exposed nerve, it has the numbing effect of second-hand journalism,” adding in regards to Vietnam War poets, that “a problem for many American poets then aspiring to be war poets was that, rightly perceiving it to be an unjust war, they could not participate as servicemen or women; and lacking first-hand experience, could not write convincingly of the war ‘on the ground.”

Yet this does not explain the many forgettable poems in the 1985 anthology (in which I am included), called Carrying the Darkness , 3 edited by a foremost poet of that war and including no less than seventy-five poets, all witnesses to the war, writing mostly in loose free verse, offering raw scenes and harsh ironies in often conversational, colloquial, cool, and hip dictions. The anthology included for its readers back home, not only topical names, but also a three-page glossary of military terms, slang, and war-related abbreviations: “AK-47, ao dai, ARVN, beaucoup, beaucoup dien cai dau, berm, BOQ/PX” etc. ending with “Zippo, zoomie.”

Other factors must be working to ensure a war poem’s success besides having the author’s feet on the battlefield. The connection of a poem with its reader surely must have to do, not only with its topic—war or whatever— but with essentials of craft , the poet’s ability to summon appropriate use of imagery, rhythm, sound play, and argument or, as Ezra Pound put it in his 1934 ABC of Reading, “you still charge words with meaning mainly in three ways, called phanopoeia, melopoeia, logopoeia. You use a word to throw a visual image on to the reader’s imagination, or you charge it by sound, or you use groups of words to do this.”  These are the shifting but essential elements of all effecting poetry, whatever the topic.

Today, in the blither of 21st century media that floods our eyes and ears each day, it is no wonder if poetry seems weak and irrelevant. In Humboldt’s Gift , Saul Bellows’ powerful 1975 novel based on his brilliant and crazed poet friend, the catastrophical Delmore Schwartz, Bellow describes poets as “poor loonies,” and seems to cast a cold view on the importance of poets in modern society:

The country is proud of its dead poets. It takes terrific satisfaction in the poets’ testimony that the USA is too tough, too big, too much, too rugged, that American reality is overpowering. And to be a poet is a school thing, a skirt thing, a church thing. The weakness of the spiritual powers is proved in the childishness, madness, drunkenness, and despair of these martyrs. Orpheus moved stones and trees. But a poet can’t perform a hysterectomy or send a vehicle out of the solar system. Miracle and power no longer belong to him. So poets are loved, but loved because they just can’t make it here. They exist to light up the enormity of the awful tangle and justify the cynicism of those who say, “If I were not such a corrupt, unfeeling bastard, creep, thief, and vulture, I couldn’t get through this either . . .”

4 That is to say, their poetic artistry of words means very little compared to the real skills, the visible , demonstrable powers of technology.

In modern America, even poets will seem to claim that “poetry makes nothing happen,” as in W.H. Auden’s famous passage in his “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth.

Poetry survives.  It is a way of happening. A mouth.

Auden’s apparent criticism in fact points to poetry’s power, including war poetry and political poetry. When its voice is memorable, poetry’s “mouth” can to speak to our innermost selves and to the universe beyond us. This is no slight thing. This changes everything . With this qualification, poetry becomes as essential for us now as it ever was—even if it is hardly read today and rarely reviewed—for if (and when) poetry gives us a “mouth,” a voice to express our most private and public concerns, poetry makes everything happen, extending our own voice and human self, opening paths to address our inmost thoughts and the universe outside of us. Poetry “objectifies the subjective; subjectifies the objective,” as the philosopher Suzanne Langer argues in her essay on the cultural importance of art. 5

But how can any art form make things happen? By changing us.

And how can it change us?  By opening in us a new sense of ourselves in the world.

My “if (and when)” above refers both to the skills of craft employed and to the “genius” of the poet evoking those skills as needed for the task at hand.  Early in our English speculations about the uses of poetry, Sir Philip Sydney wrote in his Defense of Poetry of 1580 that “a poet no industry can make if his own genius be not carried into it…”

The philosopher therefore and the historian are they which would win the goal, the one by precept, the other by example; but both not having both, do both halt. … Now doth the peerless poet perform both; for whatsoever the philosopher says should be done, he gives a perfect picture of it in someone by whom he presupposes it was done, so as he couples the general notion with the particular example. A perfect picture, I say; for he yields to the powers of the mind an image of that whereof the philosopher bestows but a wordish description, which doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul so much as that other doth.

Genius and craft.  The first is impossible to talk about and the second can’t be talked about enough, especially when engaging young writers.  As with any poetry, mere rhetorical claim or assertion may be the start of a poem, but rarely are they its completion. Rhetorically determined poetry isn’t less or different or necessarily off-putting because of its topic but for its want of persuasive skills.

Some years ago Mona Van Duyn, then the Poet Laureate of the United States, was interviewed by Ted Koppel on his ABC television show, Nightline .  Mr. Koppel must have ticked off Ms.Van Duyn because here is because here is what she said: 6

“Mr. Koppel, I have watched you over the years as you challenge, manipulate, contradict, humiliate the world’s leaders, the world’s visible powers.  Those powers are very great: they can change the world.  Now you are in a new world, the world of invisible powers, the world of literature, of poem and story.  These do not force their powers upon their subjects, who freely choose to submit to them.  You cannot contradict, challenge, manipulate or humiliate them.  They work invisibly—they widen and deepen the human imagination, they increase empathy (without which no being is truly human), they train the emotions to employ themselves with more appropriateness and precision, they change or modify the very language in which human thought is formed.  Like love, but stronger, since love’s power is limited by mortality, they are holders and keepers of what Time would otherwise take away from us—the world, both natural (its creatures, colors, shapes, textures, sounds, smells, tastes) and the social (the others we love or hate or have never known, their voices, appearances, assumptions, the inner and outer contexts of their lives).  These powers, too, are very great: they can change the self.”

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Poetry and the War(s)

Michael S. Begnal teaches writing at Ball State University. His essay on the World War I poetry of the Spectra group was published recently (2018). A poet as well as a scholar, his latest collections are The Muddy Banks (2016) and Future Blues (2012).

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Michael S Begnal, Poetry and the War(s), American Literary History , Volume 31, Issue 3, Fall 2019, Pages 540–549, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajz022

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Three new critical monographs remind us that, when it comes to war, poets have always been political. In their respective recent volumes, Tim Dayton, Rachel Galvin, and Adam Gilbert are concerned with the ways in which poets respond not only to war itself but also the ideology and propaganda that supports it, how their work resists or sometimes replicates these scripts, and the strategies they use to construct the poetic authority to address it. These critical texts, read together, reveal that resistance to hegemonic narratives is more complicated than simply writing an antiwar poem, that subverting the narratives of war requires some knowledge of how their sociopolitical and economic algorithms function to begin with. Dayton’s study offers a model of resistance to such narratives through its revealing juxtaposition of anachronistic or propagandistic poetic rhetoric with the true nature of and motives for the US’ participation in World War I. Galvin argues for the sociopolitical validity of the work of canonical modernist poets more recently disparaged as overly absorbed in aesthetic concerns. For Gilbert, poetry is an overlooked reservoir of knowledge bearing witness to the experience of US soldiers in the American War in Vietnam.

A recent essay by poet laureate Tracy K. Smith contends that, through the 1990s, American poetry was gripped by a “firm admonition to avoid composing political poems,” but with the shock of 9/11 and the ensuing war in Iraq, “something shifted in the nation’s psyche” that sparked a renewed flowering of socially engaged political poetry. Three new critical monographs remind us, however, that, at least when it comes to war, poets have always been political. In their respective volumes, Tim Dayton, Rachel Galvin, and Adam Gilbert are concerned with the ways in which poets respond not only to war itself but also the ideology and propaganda that supports it, how their work resists or sometimes replicates these scripts, and the strategies they use to construct the poetic authority to address it. Just as Smith suggests that contemporary political poetry can be “a means of owning up to the complexity of our problems, of accepting the likelihood that even we the righteous might be implicated by or complicit in some facet of the very wrongs we decry,” so do these critical texts, read together, reveal that resistance to hegemonic narratives is more complicated than simply writing an antiwar poem, that subverting the narratives of war requires some knowledge of how their sociopolitical and economic algorithms (so to speak) function to begin with.

Dayton’s American Poetry and the First World War (2018) is unique among the works considered here in that it looks at that war and the poetry it inspired through a Marxist-materialist lens. This confers a number of advantages, one being that it provides a model for contrasting the real reasons behind the US’ entry into the war with the jingoistic discourses perpetuated in its favor that the poets whom Dayton examines (mostly) amplified. Much has been written about the disillusionment that the war engendered among high modernists like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, among others, and Paul Fussell’s argument in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975)—that World War I introduces ironic disjuncture as the primary trope of literary modernism—still looms large (Fussell 38). Dayton’s aim is to examine how the poets often served Woodrow Wilson’s “audacious attempt to establish the United States as the hegemonic power of the capitalist world system” (15). Dayton’s clarity about the wider purpose of the war, “a contest over which nation would succeed the United Kingdom as the hegemonic capitalist power, the US or Germany,” needs to be made prominent because so much of the rhetoric, both in the popular press and in the poetry he studies here, helped to obscure the underlying economic reasons for the war, instead invoking an anachronistic millennialism or the ideology of a medievalist crusader (67).

Dayton spends much of his first chapter putting distance between his historical-materialist approach (his theoretical foundation is Marx’s base/superstructure model, as modified by Sean Creaven to include a third level, the substructure) and that of scholars like Mark Van Wienen, Cary Nelson, Walter Kalaidjian, and others, who have in recent decades championed the work of political poets formerly excluded from the modernist canon. Dayton terms these critics “left neo-pragmatists” and points out that “none of them operate from within a classical Marxist framework, despite their leftist commitment” (29). Though he presumably shares this political commitment, Dayton is particularly trenchant about Van Wienen’s Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War (1997). While acknowledging its value as a recovery project, Dayton criticizes this 20-year-old text for being content to do “cultural work,” which, he asserts, “threatens to devolve into a gross instrumentalism if it becomes a total program, rather than a way of understanding an aspect of literary (or other) works” and which, being itself “a hallmark of capitalist modernity, is something that Marxist critics as different as Georg Lukács and T. W. Adorno have fought against within Marxism” (31). This is noteworthy in that here we have a politically Marxist critic essentially saying that an overt Marxist political stance (as Van Wienen and Nelson articulate) is not intrinsically sufficient as a program of criticism because of its “orientation toward persuasion: Nelson and company often seem more oriented toward reshaping the reader’s vision of literary history than to disclosing the nature of the interaction between literature and history” (32). In other words, for Dayton, being a Marxist is all well and good, but literary criticism needs to investigate the ideological, structural, and economic forces that shape poets and poetry if it is to have any real value, for without that, “conflict thus appears more ethical than properly political” (34).

Such investigation is something that, Dayton charges, Van Wienen does not do: “ Partisans and Poets . . . never ventures to enquire into the deeper nature of the war itself, and so leaves unasked a variety of questions about the relationship between the war and literature about it” (35). It is true that Van Wienen, using the terminology of speech act theorist J. L. Austin, makes clear a bias against the modernist poetry of “locution”—“how a ‘grammatical utterance’ is produced within a particular formal network,” instead favoring partisan-political poems that foreground “illocution” or “the purpose of that utterance within a social situation” (Van Wienen 24). Yet, to be fair to Van Wienen, he does spend ample time delineating some of the deeper political and economic contexts of US involvement in World War I (18–22), as well as the ways that hegemonic discourses (in the Gramscian sense) and ideologies (in the Althusserian sense) intersect with the poetry that he chooses to discuss (30–34). Be that as it may, Dayton’s historical-materialist approach is rather comprehensive and allows him to engage with poets whose politics he clearly does not endorse, but whose work helps to illuminate the anachronistic rhetoric that often obscured the economic and political basis for US participation in World War I and the industrialized means by which its violence was carried out.

For example, Dayton devotes a whole chapter to Alan Seeger (most famous, of course, for his poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”), who reacted against this era of capitalist modernity by retreating into the martial ideals of “an imagined medieval world” (98). Dayton is fairly devastating in his analysis, particularly when he contrasts Seeger’s romantic embrace of war with the reality of “the machine technology characteristic of the second industrial revolution . . . applied to the business of killing people” (116). Dayton demonstrates how medievalist discourse (employed by Seeger, along with Lynn Harold Hough, Henry van Dyke, William Hartley Holcomb, and Edward S. Van Zile) was marshaled in support of the US’ business interests: “Indeed, insofar as the First World War occurred within, not against, capitalist modernity and is a part of its unfolding dynamic, medievalism was largely incorporated by the social forces it scorned, providing Seeger and others with vital self-deceptions that helped enable one of modernity’s greatest atrocities” (117). Despite Seeger’s popularity during the war years, Dayton observes that there were other poets who refused to buy into the vision he put forward in “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” In 1918, Haniel Long (perhaps best known for his 1935 documentary political poem Pittsburgh Memoranda , which preceded and likely influenced Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead [1938]) published a sonnet titled “Seeger,” which deflates the heroism of its subject and thus, as Dayton observes, “avoids the high diction of war” (143). Such toggling back and forth between writers known and until-recently forgotten (and those somewhere in the middle), between those who wrote in popular, genteel, or even high-modernist styles, provides a more holistic understanding of the historical context of the poetic response in the Great War period, where the nonetheless valuable work of Fussell, Van Wienen, et al. is more concerned with either making or unmaking the canon of modernism.

Accordingly, Dayton’s analysis of E. E. Cummings’s war poems “next to of course god america i” and “my sweet old etcetera” returns him to contending with Van Wienen, whom Dayton criticizes for “inadequately characteriz[ing] and, perhaps as a consequence, undervalu[ing] the exact nature of Cummings’s response to the war” (223). Though Cummings is nowhere actually mentioned in Partisans and Poets , it is true that he would likely be lumped in with those modernist poets of locution and individualism whom Van Wienen rejects from the scope of his criticism. As a Marxist critic, however, Dayton looks to Adorno’s defense of lyric poetry for its role in revealing “the ineluctably dialectical nature of the individual-social relation” (241). For Dayton, the linguistic experimentation in the Cummings poems remains socially engaged because it satirizes the public discourse that justifies and supports a capitalistic war effort (with “next to of course god america i” exposing the idiocy of jingoistic nationalism and “my sweet old etcetera” attacking the familial pieties of the home front). At the same time, he notes in his conclusion the contradictory situation in which modernist literature itself did have “a profound political and social character as a commentary on the decisive event of the twentieth century,” yet also became largely reactionary and, with the advent of New Criticism, sought to unmoor itself from its sociohistorical context (250). Such contradictions may be further illustrated in the fact that Cummings later became a right-wing conservative, sympathetic to the anti-Communist ideologue Joseph McCarthy (Sawyer-Lauçanno 505).

… many of the texts I analyze have been criticized as too hermetic in comparison with the ostensible transparency of politically committed poetry and, censurably, as being disengaged with politics in a time of crisis. I argue, however, that these poets’ rhetorical strategies reveal an ethically motivated self-scrutiny about the use of language in wartime. (9)

Here her modus operandi is not unlike Dayton’s rhetorical approach to Cummings. This is not to say that the broadly antiwar stances of Stevens, Moore, and Stein (or, as noted, Cummings) make their conservative politics especially palatable to anyone on the left—for example, Galvin makes clear Stein’s support of the Vichy head of state Marshal Philippe Pétain and suggests that if her translations of his speeches, intended to “trumpet Pétain’s texts to Americans,” had been published, “Stein likely would have been considered a collaborator” (279). Instead, Galvin focuses on what she terms their “meta-rhetoric,” which she defines as “the self-reflexive use of rhetorical schemes and tropes to signal the literariness and mediated, constructed nature of a text” (22). She differentiates this from the more common practice of self-reflexivity that poets have engaged in especially from the twentieth century onward, and from the standard definition of rhetoric as persuasive writing, by foregrounding its wartime context and the mediation of the press, specifically newspaper reports from the front.

This strategy provides a means of overcoming the question of authority in a post–World War I era, where the participatory experience of the British soldier-poets (Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, etc.) had quickly come to be seen as the ne plus ultra of war writing. Yet no such anxiety prevented numerous noncombatant poets on both sides of the Atlantic, before, during, and immediately after the Great War, from commenting on it in poetic form (as the work of both Dayton and Van Wienen clearly demonstrates). In his critique of Fussell, Van Wienen decries the way “that British World War I poetry becomes not only the starting point for a canon of war literature that is decisively opposed to war, but also the origin of modernism,” which also had the effect of devaluing the authority of civilian, often female poets (26). Nonetheless, such views very quickly took hold. Indeed, Galvin observes that Auden, though too young to have fought in World War I, carried a sense of guilt about his lack of war experience and worshipped the authenticity of Wilfred Owen (103–8), while Marianne Moore famously came in for a savage attack from Randall Jarrell for her poem “In Distrust of Merits,” in which she, as a woman who would not have been allowed to participate in combat even if she had wished to, dared to speak as a civilian of the suffering of war (266–72). Galvin takes up Auden’s phrase “the guilt which every civilian must feel at not being in the fighting line” to describe the problem many of these poets faced (12). Meta-rhetoric, she asserts, allows civilian poets to comment on events that they have not observed firsthand by admitting their own lack of combat experience, or “flesh-witnessing” (Galvin borrows this term from Samuel Hynes), paradoxically creating one kind of authority by exposing the lack of another.

Galvin does not deal in any length with the causes of or discourses surrounding World War II, aside from stating that it was a continuation of previous conflicts (104–6, 258). The varying, often conservative politics of the modernist poets she takes up notwithstanding, insofar as they all seem to arrive at a broadly antiwar position, speaking out in meta-rhetorical ways against the brutality of it, raises the question of exactly what broader ideological frameworks the poets were either supporting or resisting. From our vantage point, we commonly view World War II as the “Good War” heroically waged against fascism, and in some respects of course that is true. Yet at the time, as historian Kenneth D. Rose reminds us, in the run-up to and throughout the war, Americans had no clear picture of its purpose or their role in it. Indeed, he observes, there was “little in the way of flag-waving patriotism among ordinary Americans, and even less in the way of a rationale for taking part in the war in the first place,” going on to explain that this was in large part to do with the memory of the carnage of World War I, for “it had been appeals to American idealism and patriotism that had led to U.S. participation in that earlier catastrophe” (61). Thus, it seems that the poets that Galvin analyzes, Auden, Moore, Stein, and Stevens especially, whatever their individual politics, are writing out of a kind of cynicism about war in general and the resulting senseless violence. As Rose further writes, “The lack of an informing ideology seemed to affect the entire society,” and the sometimes wry tone of these civilian poets roughly mirrors that of soldier-poets like Jarrell and Karl Shapiro (64).

One wonders, then, if all the civilian poets under consideration here really felt as much guilt (per se) about their lack of flesh-witness as Auden did, given the overall lack of enthusiasm for participation. To look at it another way, Moore was already in her fifties during World War II and had no choice but to observe the unfolding of events through the mediation of the press. In any case, the issue of how to write about a war one has not seen firsthand was definitely a concern. Galvin makes the point that, in “In Distrust of Merits,” Moore already “anticipates responses from later critics such as Jarrell” by “articulating occluded vision, the problem of the observer at a distance who is not a flesh-witness” (262). This not only makes Jarrell’s attack all the more unwarranted but gives new insight to Moore’s broader poetics, which Galvin observes “often acknowledge that they are inextricable from discursive structures within which they are born,” but which is “intensified in her poems that respond to news of war” (261). Stein goes so far as to use the title Wars I Have Seen (1945) for the multigenre text that Galvin analyzes as an “anti-newspaper,” and in a sense it is apt (280). Despite (or perhaps because of) her accommodationist approach toward the Nazi occupation of France (and even her own home), Stein did have a kind of firsthand experience of the war: “Living in a country occupied by a hostile military certainly counts as witnessing war, and for innumerable noncombatants, wartime means precisely what Stein describes: waiting, worrying, working, stockpiling food, seeking news, gathering rumors, anticipating violence” (Galvin 286). Her use of meta-rhetoric involves her “pressing upon the question of what is ‘real,’” which may or may not resemble a possible response to the experience of battle (290). Certainly, the irony or disjuncture that Fussell emphasizes as the hallmark of the British soldier-poets could impart a feeling of unreality, but in those poems, it always emerges as a result of the horror experienced directly.

At the same time, the authority of flesh-witnessing is not in itself unassailable. As we have seen, Dayton argues that Seeger, a combatant eventually killed in action in World War I, deployed poetry as part of an elaborate “self-deception” about that war. The absurdity of Rupert Brooke’s simile of young men volunteering for battle “as swimmers into cleanness leaping” has been widely remarked (4). In defending her focus on civilian-authored war poetry, Galvin avers that “flesh-witnessing has certain dangers as an episteme”; “the risk is that it will help perpetuate an idealization of experience that obstructs empathy and forecloses political debate” (15). Largely avoiding these dangers, however, Gilbert examines the work of the US soldier-poets who actively participated in the American War in Vietnam. His study, A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam (2018), thus excludes certain significant figures such as John Balaban (a conscientious objector who served as a medic in Vietnam) because its stated focus is “on a group of people whose participation in, and perpetration of, the violence of the war provides them with a particularly interesting and potentially insightful vantage point from which to view the conflict’s moral issues” (8). Gilbert asserts that his study is not meant to be taken as a literary analysis; the many poets and poems that he reads (with particular attention paid to W. D. Ehrhart, Bruce Weigl, Yusef Komunyakaa, David Connolly, and Dick Shea) illuminate intersecting moral and historical questions. For Gilbert, this body of poetry is an overlooked reservoir of knowledge bearing witness to the experience of US soldiers in Vietnam.

Drawing on the work of moral historian Jonathan Glover rather than Marx, Gilbert, like Dayton, also relies heavily on Adorno as well as the further insight of Albert Camus’s philosophical text The Rebel (1951). As in Dayton’s study, Gilbert puts forward a view of the Vietnam War as “an imperialistic inheritance,” driven forward by the profit motive of large corporations (214). The poets he analyzes on this aspect of the war (Connolly, Lamont Steptoe, Steve Mason) are particularly scathing. The poets’ accounts of killing and their frequent depiction of American atrocities suggest an answer to Adorno’s famous declaration that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (qtd. in Gilbert 29). Adorno himself later gave nuance to this pronouncement, Gilbert points out, and then adds to it with his claim that “ there is no longer beauty or consolation except in the gaze falling on horror, withstanding it, and in unalleviated consciousness of negativity holding fast to the possibility of what is better ” (qtd. in Gilbert 29, Gilbert’s emphasis). In this light, Gilbert reads the work of Weigl and Ehrhart especially as a kind of atonement for the moral wrongs of the war and a rejection of the politics and discourses (for example, of patriotism, masculinity, race) supporting it.

Also in light of the aforementioned Adorno passage, perhaps, much of this poetry only foregrounds flesh-witnessing in a direct, confessional style, neither needing to engage in elaborate strategies of modernist meta-rhetoric nor wishing to construct, like Seeger, romantic or idealistic justifications of militarism. Aside from language itself, there is no mediation between direct experience and the page. Gilbert contends that these poets “show little desire for detachment but rather a strong resolve to enter into an engaged relationship with the world through their poetry” and quotes Weigl’s lines, “I can’t abide / by words that simply decorate” (29). Of course, this further reinforces these poets’ ethos of moral authority, but it is also an interesting contrast to the treatment of the American War in Vietnam in other genres of art, like film (especially Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now [1979] and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket [1987]), Michael Herr’s journalistic novel Dispatches (1977), and the fiction of Tim O’Brien, which often rely on postmodern strategies of disjuncture that blur the lines between reality and perception. Indeed, Fredric Jameson called the American War in Vietnam the “first terrible postmodern war,” which created a “breakdown of all previous narrative paradigms . . . along with the breakdown of any shared language through which a veteran might convey such experience” (44). Eric Gadzinski, for one, makes a tentative case for Weigl’s work as postmodern in the way that the “decentering transparency of” the trauma of the past intrudes upon the speaker’s sense of the present, destabilizing it (137), but, for Gilbert, the poetry’s direct style, which ethically lets its gaze fall on the horror without aestheticizing it very much, is also what allows it to be treated as a historical archive.

In this manner, given the still-ongoing wrangling over the causes and meaning of the US war in Vietnam, Gilbert’s book is a useful counterpoint to another recent recasting of its history, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary series The Vietnam War (2017). Both works centralize the testimony of soldier participants (Ehrhart appears in both), yet each makes a different argument. Even though Burns and Novick attend to the colonialist roots of the conflict, they seem intent on justifying the US involvement in Vietnam while belittling the antiwar protesters at home, whom they too often portray as either naïve fools or violent thugs. In contrast, Gilbert’s study demonstrates that many Vietnam veterans—at least those who became poets—actively supported civilian antiwar protestors “as the group of Americans who actually fulfilled their responsibility by attempting to end the war” (239). Furthermore, many even came to sympathize with the cause of the Vietcong. Gilbert registers “the widespread belief among the poets that the Vietnamese revolutionaries were fighting for a moral cause; just as there is little in the poetry that blames the revolutionaries, there is rarely any suggestion that they were fighting in anything other than a justifiable campaign” (200). Thus, we see poetry taking an active role in a debate of great political import and instantiating an ethical response to a morally repugnant war.

As contemporary poets consider strategies for engaging with and possibly resisting the US’ … perpetual, low-level … warfare throughout the Middle East and around the globe … these three scholars offer key signposts for navigating that process.

Brooke Rupert. “Peace.” Poetry , vol. 6 , no. 1 , April 1915 , p. 18 .

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Burns Ken , Novick Lynn , directors. The Vietnam War . PBS , 2017 .

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Dayton Tim. American Poetry and the First World War . Cambridge UP , 2018 .

Fussell Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. 1975 . Oxford UP , 2013 .

Gadzinski Eric. “Bruised Azaleas: Bruce Weigl and the Postwar Aesthetic.” The Vietnam War and Postmodernity , edited by Bibby Michael , U of Massachusetts P , 1999 , pp. 129 – 40 .

Galvin Rachel. News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936–1945 . Oxford UP , 2018 .

Gilbert Adam. A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam . U of Massachusetts P , 2018 .

Jameson Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . Duke UP , 1991 .

Leavell Linda. Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore . Farrar , Straus and Giroux , 2013 .

Rose Kenneth D. Myth and the Greatest Generation: A Social History of Americans in World War II . Routledge , 2008 .

Sawyer-Lauçanno Christopher. E. E. Cummings: A Biography . Sourcebooks , 2004 .

Smith Tracy K. “Political Poetry Is Hot Again: The Poet Laureate Explores Why, and How.” The New York Times Book Review , 10 Dec. 2018 . Web .

Van Wienen Mark W. Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War . Cambridge UP , 1997 .

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The Best War Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

There are many great war poems out there and there have been a great number of popular war poets. Putting together a universal list of the best  war poetry raises all sorts of questions. But since such a list will always be a matter of personal taste balanced with more objective matters such as ‘influence’ and ‘popularity with anthologists’, we hope you’ll forgive the presumptuous title ‘best war poems’.

In the list that follows, we’ve endeavoured to offer a mix of the canonical and the under-appreciated. ‘Dreamers’ is not as famous in Sassoon’s oeuvre as ‘Everyone Sang’, but we think it’s a fine poem that deserves to be read by more people.

We’ve also tried to include poems which we’ve found particularly interesting. To make it easier to select just ten great war poems, we’ve limited ourselves to the First World War (though several were written many decades later), but this is not to deny that there have been many stirring and successful poems written about other conflicts.

As ever, we’d love to hear your suggestions for the best war poems which you’d recommend. If you want to read the poems listed below, we’ve provided a link (on the poem’s title) which will take you through to it.

1. Laurence Binyon, ‘ For the Fallen ‘.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them…

Binyon wrote ‘For the Fallen’ in northern Cornwall in September 1914, just one month after the outbreak of the First World War. Binyon wasn’t himself a soldier – he was already in his mid-forties when fighting broke out – but ‘For the Fallen’ is without doubt one of the most famous poems of the First World War.

We have offered some more information about this short piece, which is at once very famous and very obscure, in our short analysis of Binyon’s poem . Some of its lines are very familiar from war memorial services, but the official remembrance poem as a whole should be better known. Listen to the great Sir John Gielgud reading Binyon’s war poem here . Follow the link above to read the poem in full.

2. Charles Sorley, ‘ When you see millions of the mouthless dead ‘.

When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you’ll remember. For you need not so…

This is not the title Sorley gave to this poem, which he left untitled at his death, aged just 20, in 1915. The Scottish poet Charles Hamilton Sorley is not well-known among WWI poets, but this poem is one of the many reasons he should be better known, in our opinion.

In this poem, Sorley tells those mourning soldiers who have died not to praise the dead men or cry for them, if the faces of dead soldiers appear to them in dreams. The dead men cannot hear or see them.

Sorley’s poem is stark and uncompromising: his reason for telling us not to bother praising or weeping for the fallen soldiers is because these ghosts are mere shadows of the men they were, and our tears or words now mean nothing to them.

The poem appears to reject the Christian hope in the afterlife that is behind many earlier poems that talk about death and mourning. Once the dead are gone, that’s it: there is no hope of a reunion or reaching across the void.

Follow the link above to take you to a previous post of ours, in which we quote this great underrated war poem in full, and for more information about Sorley.

3. John McCrae, ‘ In Flanders Fields ‘.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Although the association between fields of poppies and commemorating the war dead predates the First World War, it was certainly popularised by WWI and in particular by this John McCrae poem. McCrae, who died of pneumonia while on active service in January 1918, was inspired to write this poem in 1915 after he conducted the burial service for an artillery officer, Alexis Helmer, who had been killed in the conflict.

In the chaplain’s absence, McCrae, as the company doctor, presided over the burial of the young man, and penned these memorable lines that would help to cement the link between poppies and the fallen of WWI in the popular memory. See the link above to read the poem in full.

4. Wilfred Owen, ‘ Dulce et Decorum Est ‘.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin…

In October 1917, Wilfred Owen wrote to his mother from Craiglockhart Hospital: ‘Here is a gas poem, done yesterday……..the famous Latin tag (from Horace, Odes) means of course it is sweet and meet to die for one’s country. Sweet! and decorous!’

Although he drafted the poem that October, the surviving drafts of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ show that Owen revised and revisited it on several occasions thereafter, before his death the following November – just one week before the Armistice. (Tragically, the telegram informing Owen’s mother that her son had been killed in action the week before arrived the day of the Armistice, while everyone else was celebrating the end of the war.)

One of the most famous of all war poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ (the title is a quotation from the Roman poet Horace, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori or ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’) was written in response to the jingoistic pro-war verses being written by people like Jessie Pope . Indeed, Pope is the ‘friend’ whom Owen addresses directly in the closing lines of the poem.

However, the poem is also a harrowing and vivid account of a poison gas attack, with a number of details which immediately stick in the memory, and haunt our dreams as they haunted Owen’s, showing how naive and damaging outlooks like Jessie Pope’s really were.

‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is a fine example of Owen’s superb craftsmanship as a poet: young he may have been, and valuable as his poetry is as a window onto the horrors of the First World War, in the last analysis the reason we value his response to the horrific events he witnessed is that he put them across in such emotive but controlled language, using imagery at once true and effective.

As he put it in the draft preface he wrote for his poems: ‘My subject is War, and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.’ We’ve selected some of Wilfred Owen’s best poems here. Listen to the actor Christopher Eccleston read Owen’s poem here . The manuscript of the poem is also fascinating.

5. Siegfried Sassoon, ‘ Dreamers ‘.

Along with Owen, Sassoon was among the most celebrated of WWI poets and one of the sharpest documenters of what Owen called ‘the pity of War’. Sassoon even played an important role in helping to inspire and encourage the taut style of Owen’s poetry.

This sonnet  is not his best-known, but it’s a moving depiction of the longing the ordinary soldier felt for home, his loved ones, and the normal life he’d left behind. (See WWI blogger Grace Freeman’s pick of ten of the finest Sassoon poems here .)

6. Rupert Brooke, ‘ The Soldier ‘.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England…

Brooke is another famous poet of WWI, although he died relatively early on in the conflict and wrote very different kind of war poetry from Owen and Sassoon. As we’ve revealed elsewhere , he did not live to enjoy much of his fame, but this poem – patriotic and stirring as it is – played a vital role in the early days of the War in helping to bring England together in uncertain times.

Indeed, the poem was read aloud in St Paul’s Cathedral in Easter 1915, shortly before Brooke’s death. See also our pick of Rupert Brooke’s best poems . Listen to Sophie Okonedo reading Brooke’s poem here . Follow the link above to read Brooke’s poem in full.

7. Isaac Rosenberg, ‘ Break of Day in the Trenches ‘.

The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet’s poppy To stick behind my ear…

Along with Sorley and Owen, Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) was considered by Robert Graves to be one of the three poets of importance whom we lost during the First World War. Like Owen and McCrae, Rosenberg died in 1918 before the Armistice, and his reputation as a great war poet was posthumous. His style is far more taut and reserved – more down-to-earth and matter-of-fact, even – than Owen and Sassoon.

The emphasis is less on the pity of war than an almost documentary-like attention to detail, showing us what life in the trenches was like for the average combatant. (Compare another WWI poem, T. E. Hulme’s poem about the trenches of St. Eloi , which is similarly restrained and unsentimental.)

‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ is perhaps Rosenberg’s most famous poem, and showcases his taut, no-nonsense style which he shares with Owen (and Sorley, to a degree). Rats, poppies, the ‘torn fields of France’: like Owen, Rosenberg puts us among the action, painting a stark, realistic scene of warfare and the daily lives of the soldiers.

8. Majorie Pickthall, ‘ Marching Men ‘.

Under the level winter sky I saw a thousand Christs go by. They sang an idle song and free As they went up to Calvary…

Although the most famous war poets in the English language were male, this doesn’t mean women didn’t write about the First World War – and many turned to poetry as a way of expressing their experiences of witnessing war from the sidelines (although it’s worth remembering that many, such as the volunteer nurses among others, weren’t on the sidelines but down among the fighting).

Pickthall (1883-1922) was Canadian, although she was born in London. She was regarded by some as the greatest Canadian poet of her generation, and this short poem is a moving religious take on the sacrifice being made by thousands of men every week: ‘With souls unpurged and steadfast breath / They supped the sacrament of death. / And for each one, far off, apart, / Seven swords have rent a woman’s heart.’

The poem deserves to be better known outside of Canada than it is, as it is an interesting example of a ‘war poem’ written during the First World War, but by a female civilian rather than a male combatant.

9. Clifford Dyment, ‘ The Son ‘.

Dyment (1914-1971), one of the literary alumni of Loughborough Grammar School, was born in the year that WWI broke out, and wrote this sonnet about his father, who died during the conflict while Dyment was still very young.

Poignantly, the poem was inspired by the discovery of his father’s letters home to Clifford’s mother, including the last letter he ever wrote to her about his request for leave being rejected.

The idea of his luck being ‘at the bottom of the sea’, used to such effect in this fine poem, was taken from his father’s letter – an example of a poetic image taken from a private letter being used in a poem.

10. Philip Larkin, ‘ MCMXIV ‘.

‘MCMXIV’ is the year 1914 in Roman numerals. As the literary critic Christopher Ricks has observed, Larkin’s decision to title his poem ‘MCMXIV’ rather than ‘1914’ or ‘Nineteen Fourteen’ means we cannot be sure how to pronounce the poem’s title aloud: calling it ‘1914’ is accurate, of course, but fails to transmit the Latin stylising of the date.

Conversely, reciting the individual letters (or numerals) that make up the title makes little sense. This is a title we need to  read , on the page: like the ‘Latin names around the base’ in  another of Larkin’s poems, ‘An Arundel Tomb’ , ‘MCMXIV’ suggests the lapidary inscriptions on tombs – or, indeed, on war memorials.

This poem heads our list of Larkin’s best poems , since it’s a stunning and moving portrayal of how WWI changed the world – not through focusing on mustard gas and machine-gun fire (Larkin, born in 1922, was obviously born after the end of WWI and was excused service in WWII on medical grounds), but on the changes wrought upon the daily lives of families and communities.

The roll-call of everyday Edwardian details, which Larkin believes have vanished in the wake of the First World War, builds across one long sentence (yes, the poem is just one sentence long) to its moving conclusion.

Alternatively, switch war for love with this pick of the best very short love poems in English .

15 thoughts on “The Best War Poems Everyone Should Read”

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A fine selection – particularly glad to see Isaac Rosenberg in there – thank you. My own personal addition would be David Jones’s remarkable ‘In Parenthesis’ (though with seven parts that run to some 187 pages, it is certainly a ‘longer poem’). Jones, an artist (like Rosenberg) fought in the trenches but survived. ‘In Parenthesis’ starts in Britain, with the men marching off to embarkation, and ends on a battlefield in the midst of the conflict; it blends Arthurian legend and Shakespearean battle-references with a contemporary account to convey the perennial nature of war, and the lot of the ordinary soldier down the ages. You can find some background and get a flavour of it here: http://www.arduity.com/poets/jones/inparenthesis.html Well worth a look!

Thanks for the link to this – I agree, Jones is an unappreciated modernist poet and In Parenthesis is wonderful (T. S. Eliot thought so too, if I remember rightly). His later (and longer) poem The Anathemata is a fantastic blending of myth, religion, and literary references too!

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No Edward Thomas : (

He nearly made it on the list for ‘Rain’, but regrettably we left him off! We’ve analysed the lovely ‘Adlestrop’ here: http://interestingliterature.com/2015/10/20/a-short-analysis-of-adlestrop-by-edward-thomas/

And we will be returning to him soon! :)

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War Poetry and Poets in English Literature

Introduction

Table of Contents

The First World War had a far-reaching effect on English poetry. It provided a new source of inspiration for the poets of established reputation and brought to public notice many poets, particularly among the young men who fought in the war. Moreover, it serves as a great social document. There can be no clearer reflection of the changing national attitude to the war than that found in war poetry . Broadly two phases of the national attitude can be distinguished in war poetry. The first was one of patriotic fervour, almost of rejoicing in the opportunity of self-sacrifice in the cause of human freedom, and a revival of the romantic conception of the knight-at-arms (Albert). Many poets who lived and served throughout the war had this patriotic fervour of the early years unaffected. But as the carnage went on increasing and there was no hope of its end, other poets arose with the declared intention of blasting this romantic illusion of the glory of war by a frank realistic depiction of the horrors, savagery and futility of war. This realistic attitude to the war was at first cried down as unpatriotic, but it has stood the test of time better than the romantic attitude of the early years. The poets of the 1914-18 war divide themselves into two groups- romantic war poets and realistic war poets.

(A) Romantic War Poets

I. rupert brooke.

The most outstanding of the romantic (idealistic) war poets was Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). Much of Brooke’s reputation is due to his remarkably good looks, his winning personality and his premature death in action stifling great expectations. He began to write poetry in the Georgian tradition, drawing inspirations from nature and simple pleasures. Out of this Georgian mood he was swept by the high emotions inspired by the rising wave of patriotism on the eve of the world war. He hailed the war with patriotic fervour. He wrote a number of war sonnets to express his patriotic enthusiasm, his pride in England, and his resolve to serve her. He became the spokesman for the dedication of the English people to the cause of their country. Of his war sonnets the most typical is The Soldier . It rings with his pride in being an Englishman and his glorification of the death of English soldiers in the front for England. He enlisted as a soldier and went to war to defend the honour of his motherland. As a war-poet he takes an idealistic view of war and speaks of its glory, glamour and heroism, and not its brutality and ghastliness.

It is natural to speculate what a great poet he might have been if he had lived on. The marks of greatness in his poems are few, but such marks there are. He saw the world with a clear eye and recorded what he saw with directness and clarity. Yet, however poetic in himself, he is more important as the occasion of poetry in others. ”The war-time revival of English poetry,” as Ward says, “had its origin in Brooke alone.”

“Rupert Brooke may be styled as a twentieth century Keats, having many points in common with him. He has the same rich sensuousness, the same maturity of expression, something of the same poignant yearning for beauty.”

His poetry was published in Poems (1911); 1914 and other Poems (1915) and Collected Poems (1918).

II. Julian Grenfell

Another victim of the First World War , Julian Grenfell (1888–1915), maintains a spirit of tranquility and confidence not found in other war poets. In the midst of fire he can withdraw into himself and find solace in the objects of nature–trees, birds, grass, stars, etc. His famous poem Into Battle mirrors this serene attitude in which even death does not appear the horror it is.

 (B) The Anti-War Poets

I. siegfried sassoon.

Siegfried Sassoon (18861967) is the first soldier poet to treat the war with horrifying realism and bitter satire and irony. Invalided early in the war, he writes from his personal experiences in the front. Unlike Rupert Brooke he does not throw any romantic veil over the realities of war, which he depicts “as a dirty mess of blood and decaying bodies.” A pacifist at heart he writes about the nightmare of trench warfare and other horrors. In his Counter-attack (1918), a collection of violent, embittered poems, he paints, with a studied bluntness, and often a provocative coarseness of language, the horrors of life and death in the trenches, dug-outs and hospitals. A merciless and calculated realism gives to his work a vitality not previously found in English poetry. His poetry bears the stamp of his determination to shock the people at home into the bitter realization of the ghastly truth. It burns with anger with the arm chair politicians responsible for war.

His other war poems are War Poems (1919), Picture-show (1920) and Satirical Poems (1926). Sassoon’s work inspired the greatest of all the war poets Wilfred Owen.

War Poetry by Siegfried Sassoon

• The Last Meeting
• The Death Bed
• The Poet as Hero
• Suicide in the Trenches

II. Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) is the greatest of the war poets. He discards the usual romantic notions about war and strikes a new realistic note in his war poetry. Unlike Rupert Brooke he does not find in soldiers’ exploits “a sense of new crusades and modern knightliness.” He expresses in his poems the dreadful experience he underwent as a soldier, Inspired by Sassoon’s war poetry he presents the cruelty and inhumanity of a soldier’s doing, the reality and futility of war and the reckless wastage of nobility, youth and heroism. He looks upon war as a meaningless dance of death and an agency of great suffering to mankind. He regards it as the cruel business of the arm-chair politicians who exploit the blooming youth in the name of patriotism.

But what distinguishes Owen’s war poetry is not the description of the horrors of war, but the exploration of the pity of war. As he himself says, in the preface to his poems (1920):

“Above all, I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is war and the pity of war, The poetry is in the pity.”

There is in each of his poems a piercing pity welling out of the colossal waste of human life and opportunity, the callous indifference with which human lives are thrown away in the front a pity more sober and restrained, yet deeper far than the sentimental pity aroused by the tragic tangles of domestic life. This pity has never been more powerfully shown than in his Strange Meeting .

War Poetry by Wilfred Owen

• Strange Meeting
• Spring Offensive
• Dulce et Decorum est
• Anthem for Doomed Youth
• Insensibility
• Arms and the Boy
• The Dead-Beat
• Soldier’s Dream

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WAR POETRY: Themes in War Poetry

ENGLISH G.C.S.E. COURSEWORK

Before World War One, war was seen as glorious and honourable.  These attitudes are reflected in the phrase Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mari, translated this means that it is sweet and fitting to die for your country.  It was a firm belief that everyman should fight for his country.  However, World War One changed this attitude that people had, as they had seen the effects of war on people.

Warfare before World War One was believed to be men on horses battling or men on foot with swords and shields facing the same weapons as their own from the opposition.  Over the years, technology has progressed and developed.  New weapons were introduced and implemented during warfare, tanks and helicopters were brought in and this modified the whole perception of warfare and altered the idea of war to the reality of war and how it was during a battle and on the battlefield.

In this essay, I shall be looking at the Patriotism of war, the Irony in war and the horrors of war.  I will use my social, cultural and historical knowledge and by using particular poems, I will support my idea of the attitudes changed after World War One.  For this essay I will be looking at six different poems, two for each theme I am looking at.  For the Patriotism of war, I will be using ‘The Call’ by Jessie Pope and ‘To An Athlete Dying Young’ by A.E. Houseman.  For the Irony in war, I will be using ‘The General’ by Seigfried Sassoon and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson.  For the horrors of war, I will be using ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘Mental Cases’ by Wilfred Owen.

Jessie Pope is an excellent example of pre-war poetry because she writes with very strong patriotism. She encourages people to go out and fight for their country, for glory and honour, for the king and for the people of England! Her poetry blinded the men from the horrors of the war, and gave them visions of, “banners and rolling drums”. The brave young men left England swelling with pride, sure of victory, eating the “empires thanks”, no idea that they would be crawling back, distraught, mad and in most cases, not at all.

The poem follows the same rhyme scheme in each of the three stanzas. A,B,A,B, then three lines of C and back to B. Line A is always encouraging the reader, telling them of the glory and how wonderful it is to fight, always asking who, “who’s for the trench?” in this way she is addressing the reader with a rhetorical question. Line B is a question, “would you my laddie?”, or a slight variation, again addressing the reader, almost daring them to refuse or take on a challenge. The lines of C put the reader to what they are fighting for and, dare them to be cowards.

After the war, Pope was contrasted as an unreliable source next to a first hand witness such as Owen, who wrote in direct opposition to her. She was thought a bad poetess who didn’t understand the actual truth and concept of war. But just because she had an opinion, which was opposed by witnessed of the war, she was labelled as wrong and unreliable. Pope wrote with patriotism rarely expressed by woman of that time. She was expressing her opinion, not talking about every solider on the front line.

“The soldier” is a prime example of Brookes understanding and personal outlook on the deserved sympathies of the soldiers of WW1.

The first stanza follows an A,B rhyme scheme, though occasionally using half rhymes. The second stanza follows an A,B,C rhyme scheme, only the last line is a half rhyme. The rhythm is constant and relatively slow, with the use of commas and full stops, which helps you to fully understand the meaning of each line. The title, ‘The Solider’ is meant to refer to what every soldier should feel when going into war. Although the poem expresses one mans opinion, written in the first person, it inspires people to feel the same way. Patriotism and use of language is represented by “If I should die, think only this of me:” The opening line emphasises bravery. This soldier knows that he might die and asks only that the people remember what this poem represents, “That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England...”

This is a clear representation of patriotism, that it is good and honourable to die because wherever your body lies, will become part of England and in this poem, England stands for all that is good and strong. “In that rich earth a richer dust concealed” and “blest by the suns of home” emphasises this. The first stanza also describes how England bred this solider and made him happy.

This is a preview of the whole essay

“Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,” as if to say England has always served you, it is worth to die for what make you who you are.

The main feeling portrayed in the second stanza is that you, the solider, are English, thus representing the top nation and will be eternally blessed. The lines reinforce this: “Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given.” The thoughts that England gave to you are now being given back somewhere else to honour England. As you have done this, you shall be blessed, in other words.

The poem is written with real feeling for his country. The reader is blinded from the horrors of war and at the same time filled with patriotism.

‘The General’ is a short simple poem. Siegred Sassoon uses irony in most of his poems. In this he refers to the leaders higher up in the ranks that send these men to their death, say they were “incompetent swine” and “the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead.” The overall picture the poem portrays is that of lions being led by donkeys. “But he did for them both by his plan of attack”, this suggests the same, that the Generals did not work hard enough and this is reflected by the number of soldiers who died during the war.

The rhyme scheme is used to continue the flow of a slow pace. This is to create the sadness of death. The impression created is a horrid, dull morbid atmosphere, which makes the reader understand and comprehend the times of the war.

The next poem I am going to use is, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.  This supports ‘The General’ as they are both poems, which have an irony theme.

‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is a repetitive poem, so that it can convey a point to the reader.  It uses the sentences “Rode the six hundred” and “Into the valley of Death” repeatedly to show the mistakes of the General, even though he knew it was wrong, a mistake to let them go on.  “Someone had blundered.”

The brave soldiers who were proud to fight for their country never neither questioned nor queried the order.  “Theirs was not to make reply, Theirs was not to reason why.”  They lost their lives being respectful, in the sense that they were told to go out and fight for their country even if it meant they were to die during battle.  They did not question the General as he was of a higher status to them, they would not question the strategy he was following, even if it meant the soldiers losing their own lives.  “Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred.”

The main similarity between the two poems, ‘The General’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is that the meaning behind the poems is the same.  Its main point that, the soldiers did as they were told by the Generals without asking questions, eventually lead to their death.  The brave soldiers died during the battle because the Generals with their status and power lead did not do their jobs properly and as a result the soldiers lost their lives.  The main difference in the poems is the length of them, ‘The General’ is a much shorter poem in comparison to the ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

The last theme I will be looking at in this essay is that of Horror and how it is conveyed to the reader through the language used and the imagery the poet wants the reader to create in their minds as they read the poems.  I will be using two poems called, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental Cases’ both of which are written by Willfred Owen.

When looking at ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, there are signs of rhythm, rhyme, imagery and a theme with suitable language, which enables the reader to visualise the poem.  The A,B rhyme scheme, use of commas, semi colons and long sentences are all used to slow down the pace of the first stanza.  This is changed in the second stanza as the soldiers are trying to survive, the pace quickens, and this atmosphere is created with the use of small words and short sentences.  Which is done through the first line, which has small words and exclamation marks which quickens the pace “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling”.  With this quote it is also possible to see the change in pace that the soldiers had to face, the gas bombs were upon them, they had seconds to react to protect themselves.  The change of pace is echoed simultaneously with the change of imagery that Owen is creating, so the reader can sense the soldiers’ urgency.  The change in the pace of the language reflects the mood of the poem, enabling the reader to be drawn into the theme of war and especially the horrors of war that the soldiers faced.

The poem contains similes, such as “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”, describing the effects of the gas on a young soldiers face.  Metaphors are also included, such as “incurable sores on innocent tongues” describing the effects of the gas attack on the innocent soldiers who wanted to serve for their country, not knowing that this was how they were going to die.  The similes and metaphors have been included to engage the reader within the poem.  The imagery created is engrossing the reader making them feel that they are actually witnessing this particular horror of war, the gas attack described in the poem.  

This poem is focusing on the young soldiers who are faced with the horrors of war, which are not witnessed or endured by the people who do not serve for their country.  The effects of this are aging the soldiers, “like old beggars”.  Personification is also used which involves the reader more actively in the poem by creating visual imagery, so they can try and feel the suffering of the soldiers was like.  “Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”  The words used by the poet are very visual allowing imagery to be created instantly, as the lines are read.  

The language used in the lines of the poem create an atmosphere of unpleasantness for the reader, it reflects regret as so many “innocent” lives are lost in the war.  A good example of a similie, which reflects this is, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”.  The life out on the battlefield and in the trenches was very different to what the young, enthusiastic soldiers expected.  This was because a completely different picture was painted for them to encourage them to be patriotic and want to serve their country in battle.  Owen uses a lot of similes, metaphors and personification in this poem, to try and communicate to the reader, what conditions and horrors the soldiers faced, which they probably had not expected.  They had to try and survive through although most did not and many watched as fellow soldiers, their friends died, while they were helpless in stopping the suffering of the horrors that war brought along with the battles.

Owen makes the reader feel like they are actually witnessing the events of the gas attacks by creating imagery for the reader through the language he uses. He wants us to try and imagine what the soldiers witnessed and felt.  “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight”, with these words he is portraying a haunting image that the soldiers would never even have dreamt of seeing, now confronted with these scenes they are utterly helpless and cannot aid the suffering soldiers.  “guttering, choking, drowning.” Is an image of what is happening to the soldier, his skin is melting because of the gas bombs.  They were injured in the attack because they were not alter enough to react quick enough as they were, “Drunk with fatigue”.  “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” this refers to the once young and healthy soldiers who have altered due to the amount of weight that they have to carry all the time.  One of the aspects that they were not made aware of was the effect the weight would have on their backs.  

The poet addresses readers in his poem with, “My friend”, he is directing the following lines to the reader so now he has changed the focus of his poem.  At first the reader has been invited and consumed into the poem through the language, pace and imagery used.  Now towards the end of the final stanza the reader is addressed directly with the words, “you would not tell such high zest  To children ardent for some desperate glory”.  He has described some of the images that the soldiers witness to the reader, inviting them to imagine the scenes they saw.  Now with the quote he is saying that after knowing what suffering and horrors the soldiers experience, you would not lie to children who want some of the glory of fighting for their country, without knowing the true consequences and horrors of war so they too can suffer what has only been described and not actually felt.    

This poem by Owen is a very good example of portraying images of horror.  The language used and the imagery which is created with this language and the pace set allows the reader to witness, from a very safe distance some of the glory attached to war. It is about an incident that the soldiers face.

After analysing Mental Cases, I noticed that there was no particular evidence of rhythm or a rhyme scheme within the poem. The poet may have done this on purpose to reflect the instability of the soldiers’ lives during the war.  The lack of rhythm and rhyme could be to portrait the life of the soldiers during the war, as their life had become the same day in, day out, with the marching and the fighting.

The poet has increased the amount of imagery included in the poem, so the reader is able to visualise and experience how the soldiers may have lived during the war.  This may also be done to see what it would have been like and why they would have become mentally unstable due to the images, sounds and horrors they faced with everyday.

“Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,” this means that the soldiers are sitting in the dark, waiting for battle. “Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?”  These two sentences are used to show the tiredness of the soldiers after they sit awake, day and night waiting to be called for battle. “Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,” The words ‘slow panic’ are used to describe the duration of the war, this is also a metaphor, Owen uses plenty of these and also similes such as “Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.” And “Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?” “Fretted sockets?” is used to describe the appearance of their eyes, almost as though they’re sunken, because of their lack of rest and sleep. “Sleeping and walk hell; but who these hellish?” These questions, who are they? Who lives like that? These soldiers do nothing except from sleep for a short while and march through the hell that is called war.

All these descriptions of war are used to explain and illustrate how the soldiers lived and why they became mentally ill. Every small thing about how the soldiers lived contributed to their condition making it worse, causing them to deteriorate and force them to become mentally insane.

“These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished,” The minds of soldiers who keep on having flashbacks of other dead soldiers have starved – ravished. These horrific images are always in their minds, forcing them to constantly reflect about them, making them go insane. “Multitudinous murders they once witnessed,” The deaths of the fellow soldiers they have seen are memories, which also cause flashbacks, making the soldiers persistently think about the horror in which they witnessed.

“Always they must see these things and hear them, Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, Carnage incomparable, and human squander Rucked too thick for these men’s’ extrication.” The last four sentences in the second stanza indicate what the soldiers hear and see everyday, the reality of war and not what it was depicted to them.

“Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.” This is the face of the dead soldiers that spin round in their heads. They are haunted by the images of the dead. “Thus their hands are plucking at each other;” This shows the soldiers are fidgeting and shows that their minds are becoming unstable because of all the images and scenes they have witnessed. “Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; Snatching after us who smote them, brother, Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.” These previous three lines are to conclude the poem by saying that someone should confront the people who sent them to this misery and give them these images and madness these soldiers have to live with.  The word ‘brother’ is used in the second line, this is used to refer and talk to that someone who ‘dealt’ – convinced them to go and endure all this madness - dealing with the sights and smells the soldiers have seen.

The poem concentrates on the effects of war on the soldiers, the reality is that, they have to endure all the images that they are left with. The effect it has on them they are left mentally disturbed as a result of fighting in the war.

In conclusion it is possible to learn that the poets whom I have looked at have different ways in portraying war.  This was made clear to me when I looked and analysised there work. The different themes can change and effect the way war is portrayed, for example, famous poets such as Wilfred Owen could influence poems becoming well known and therefore attitudes against war welfare could change as the theme of the poem which is written is more known of. It is possible to say poems famous of the time greatly influenced the way people saw and thought of the war, this is significant as the poets deliberately expressed feelings against war in this attitude.

In many poems, the poets deliberately question and address the reader, making them feel somewhat involved even thought they were not there to experience war first hand. This is done primarily to influence the reader’s opinion of the war and to greaten their knowledge of warfare through their own experience or personal opinions.

The message given from poems is still somewhat relevant; this is as we remember the lives of all the soldiers still today. However, the message cannot be seen as important as it would have been at the end of World War One as the war does not have a big control on the way we live or even the way we see it now.  

Document Details

• Word Count 3399
• Page Count 6
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject English

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As I do nearly every night, I will sweep the floor when my mother dies. I will miss her and not call her and little will change, like the not calling. Every night I think of her and don't call because the thinking is soothing and the calling is not. I sweep the floor and think about what I've been asked to write, an essay on war.                                        _________ "Most of us have not been to war," I begin, "yet certain photographs make us remember what never happened to us. Either our imaginations are marked or no longer our own." Dust dwelling in corners deforms what I think of as an edge. There is the wall, and there, alongside it, trails the dust, stubborn, unrelenting. There— a boy asleep on the beach, a girl turned into flame. In my mind I am at war with images, my mother brazenly unsmiling in a photograph until the end of time. Her mouth's dark red, a terrible ellipsis. Now, awed by the body in time, she dons a smile rinsed out like an absence. I hate poetry. I hate art. One broad sweep, and still the house will not be cleaned. My floors. My nighttime habits. I write without experience: "Dying is a fact few of us can bear."                                        _________ My mother is dying and we pretend nothing will happen. There is the onslaught. Tiny particles of my children proliferate . . . our breakfast crumbs, my grief, the nothing that scatters across the room, that won't be swept away. I try to not burn the toast. I try to not bend to abstraction, this page torn out of nothing. What did you pluck out of the tree? What did you put in your mouth? My mother, who is dying, tells me to lock the doors and windows. Winter is coming. Every house is a target. I live in a house with a writing desk. As a child, H's mother, barely escaping the war, left everthing behind—a well-stocked kitchen, the first books she read in English. She held onto her small self, her only baggage, covetously, terrified in the backseat of a stranger's car barreling toward a border. Now in America my mother is dying. She is scared of deer, snakes, caterpillars, rats, and some men. And windows and doors. I no longer know where she puts the broom, if she sweeps the house or answers the phone.                                        _________ Who made this mess? I write, "The mother of all wars is inside ourselves: I cannot decide whether to speak or stay silent, or I speak only ineffectual words, the crackling sounds that trees make on a windy night?" The season changes; again nothing is coming out of my mouth. I read a poem about a family photograph, the son long gone, the mother years into a second language, second life. Her hair is a black wave in a black ocean. I write, "Why do we not think of this as an image of war?" The daughters look nothing alike. I am leaving the door open, the windows unlatched. I sweep the floor as my children sleep, I sweep out the leaves they've carried into the house, every corner the dust, the dust, the dust. My mother was born in a war, outlasted wars I studied and wars I never heard of. Never saw. My whole life.

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• March 11, 2023

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“An Essay on War & The Death of Socrates” originally appeared in The Georgia Review, Volume LXXV, No. 2 (Summer 2021), © 2021 by The University of Georgia / © 2021 by Jennifer Chang. Reprinted by permission of Jennifer Chang and The Georgia Review.

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Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark , which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2012 and 2022 , The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry , and the Yale Review . She co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, serves as poetry editor of New England Review , and teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. Her third book of poems, An Authentic Life , is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2024.

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Revenge Poetry? Israel's "Soldier-Poets" Reveal The True Essence Of The War On Gaza

BEIRUT — The Israeli daily Haaretz published a recent article about the poetry anthology, “I Am Here,” published by the Israeli military with poems written by soldiers fighting in Gaza.

The anthology was compiled under the supervision of the poet Eliaz Cohen, who is described as an “artist-settler,” and has been calling since October 7 for the establishment of a refugee camp in southern Gaza until the army ends “the military operation.”

Cohen has said that the project came from his admiration for the morals of Abraham, who called for preserving the lives of innocents, and discussed with the Lord's plans to destroy “Sodom.” The word of the Lord, as the biblical story tells us, is stronger.

From the Book of Genesis: “And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. Then he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace.”

After the invitation was launched on Oct. 8 in cooperation with the “Restoring the Soul” foundation, hundreds of entries arrived. That led to publishing many parts of the anthology, the first of which arrived ten days after the invitation was provided.

The eighth installment of the anthology sparked serious controversy, ultimately leading to the withdrawal of its copies. Some poems were delayed in a reprinted version, because they “do not represent the morals of the Israeli army,” and included “a call for revenge.”

The poetry anthology has been highly politicized in Israel, as it was officially issued by the army, and some feared normalizing the “culture of revenge.”

Under military supervision

It turns out that the Israeli army doesn't actually mind the spreading of the “culture of revenge,” and even favors it given that Telegram channels that broadcast pictures of naked, humiliated Gazans under the military’s supervision.

The poem that raised the matter was in the eighth part and titled “Tunnels of Destiny,” by the reserve First Sergeant Masher Shaz. Haaretz didn’t report the deleted passages, rather it used other less provocative ones.

Who chose to have his name in the grave of hell.

An account on X platform , @ireallyhateyou, published the verses, and the translator noted the play on the similarity between the words “God is great” and “God is a mouse” in Hebrew:

This God, in whose name you slaughter, is a mouse

Big mouse, great mouse,

A mouse running into a hole in the mud

A spear, to pound the road beneath,

The territory that trucks cross

It revives the name of the mouse in whose name they smuggle weapons

A spear, to stab murderers

“Elite Forces” in the ditches,

In the temple of the great mouse with gold and hemorrhoids

The translator comments that “the big golden mouse” is a reference to the false god similar to the golden cow. We are not commenting on the value of the poem, as it’s written by a soldier constrained by national and religious ideology .

The same goes for the poem “Gaza Waits for Us” by soldier Perry Chaim Schwartzman:

Another messenger of fire

On your walls is Gaza

Much will be said

About all your monuments

But every child’s head will be broken on a stone.

Haaretz noted that all poems with Jewish religious references, and insults to the Islamic religion were deleted, especially those referring to Israel’s war on Gaza as a religious war .

Soldiers' texts are not a new literary genre. In 2022, a book was published of texts Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) wrote when he was on the frontline in World War I . The book includes personal diary : poetry, sarcasm, reflections, and advice. In one text, he says the sole way of survival in the military is to read Leo Tolstoy and masturbate.

We will be mines and human bombs.

There are also poems by Syrian soldiers on the front, whose exact source remains unknown:

“And if the cruelty increases, we will pledge to Assad Bashar ... we will be mines and human bombs.”

There is also the Jihadi poetry. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, who was a spokesman for the Islamic State (ISIS), once said: “But we will annihilate them, O Knight/We will raise the foundations of our edifice of faith.”

The value of poetry here is more emotional than aesthetic — and the ideology is very clear. However, (theoretically) the word “poetry” protects the text because we are faced with “imagination,” no matter how ideological it is, and imagination has no restrictions.

In his “Making of Poetry” lectures, Jorge Borges said that poetry is “emotion and pleasure,” and the reader must also have the skill of understanding the metaphor.

It has nothing to do with poetry!

But how can this theory be applied to texts where we know exactly how they were born and what they refer to?

Understanding the metaphor and treating what is written as a “truth” threatens the reading of “all” poetry, and turns it into “speeches.”

Here we are not defending those who carry arms to kill, rather than the word "poetry.” For the question about anthology is purely political, and has nothing to do with poetry or poetic imagination.

It’s all about the image of the Israeli soldier, but to whom? The anthology was published in Hebrew and distributed within Israel. Its audience is specific and well-known. Also, who would read trivial, low-quality poetry written for extremist soldiers who celebrate murder?

It is clear that the problem then lies in the “military doctrine” and the “soldier image,” which turned into a fetish affair on dating apps , according to Haaretz .

The soldier is also not merely obeying the orders of others. He alone must bear the consequences of his actions.

The problem is not in the poetic text and “metaphors,” but rather in the soldier himself as a material manifestation of the state’s military authority. The soldier has his finger on the trigger and has the decision of death and life. As a result of this situation, it is assumed that the “soldier’s poetic imagination” has a performative value, which means that he has the “authority” to implement what he says on the terrain of war.

This should be a reminder that the soldier is also not merely an individual and a citizen obeying the orders of others. He alone must bear the consequences of his actions . Carrying a weapon (either by choice or by force) is linked to the authority of the state itself, and perhaps when we are faced with the act of killing, the speech turns quickly away from “poetry” to action. It is no longer a metaphor; but becomes a future promise.

The more tangible question is: when you are a fighter and describe the killing you committed, is your “text” considered evidence of guilt?

An officer told Haaretz that the poems were deleted because they portray the war on Gaza as “religious war.” But, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself said that the soldiers fighting in Gaza are descendants of the soldier Joshua bin Nun, who, according to the Hebrew Bible, God stopped the sun at the heat of the sky on a Friday upon his request to end his battle and reach Jerusalem.

The case of Radovan Karadžić

In the case of poetry and its relationship with crime and conviction, there is the Serbian “poet” Radovan Karadžić who was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity during the civil war that followed Bosnia and Herzegovina ’s split from Yugoslavia in 1992.

Karadžić stood next to the Russian poet Eduard Limonov on the “Terbevec” hill overlooking Sarajevo and recited poetry.

At that time, with the sounds of bullets behind him, Karadzic spoke about a poem he wrote in 1971 in Sarajevo:

“ I hear the misfortune threads Turned into a beetle as if an old singer Is crushed by the silence and turned into a voice.The town burns like a piece of incense In the smoke rumbles our consciousness. Empty suits slide down the town. Red is the stone that dies, built into a house. The Plague!

Kardic said he was predicting war when he wrote that poem, and that his poetry at that time was full of violence, murder, and the vocabulary of war.

After he finished reciting his poem, Kardic and Limonov opened fire from the top of the hill at the homes of civilians in Sarajevo.

The problem of Kardić and the Israeli "soldier-poets” falls under what the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, describes as the “warrior-poet syndrome.”

In 2005, Lawyer and researcher Jay Surdukowski referred to that syndrome in the Michigan Journal of International Law in a paper entitled “Is Poetry a War Crime?”

Surdukovsky discusses Kardić’s case as a “warrior poet,” whether his poetry can be used as legal evidence in a court to prove “committing massacres,” “intent to commit massacres,” and “involvement in committing a massacre.”

Surdokovsky said that poetry is fit as evidence, arguing that conditions for accepting evidence at the International Criminal Court are open to many possibilities, including: “any form of words or actions that can express a pattern of actions with a specific goal.” But no case was found in which poetry has been used as evidence in international or national courts.

What is avoided when talking about soldiers is the concept of religious extremism, whether they are Israeli or otherwise, although the pictures and quotes (and this time poems) expose this matter.

For the soldiers to be religious extremists means that war is sacred, at least from their point of view. And that contradicts the concept of a secular state!

Turning the war into the “sacred” threatens Israel itself.

“ Censorship ” of the anthology can also be linked to an attempt to recruit ultra-Orthodox Jews who are exempt from compulsory military service. So, the anthology could be a kind of warning: recruiting extremists means that the Israeli army may turn into an ideological army that fulfills religious prophecies, not a “defense army!”

To avoid describing the military institution as “religious extremism,” is an attempt to exonerate soldiers from following the path of biblical prophecies, to make the Israeli army different from its “enemies,” the extremist groups and oppressive regimes that employ religious militias. This is exactly what one of those in charge of the army education unit said. The officer thinks that the problem with the anthology is that it appeared while Israel was waging a war against a “radical Islamic group.”

Turning the war into the “sacred” threatens Israel itself and enforces the rivalry between the “secular” and “extremist” trends.

For the army to be “ideological,” means that the army’s mission is to protect the extremists and their way of life, not the citizens who served in the military. And most importantly, it means that the current state of war will not end with the elimination of Hamas , but rather the fulfillment of a prophecy whose precise limits we will never know..

Like our content? Follow us for more. This article first appeared on Worldcrunch.com It was translated and adapted by Worldcrunch in partnership with DARAJ . For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here .

War Poetry: Poets’ Attitudes Towards War Expository Essay

Introduction, works cited.

People always express their views about contemporary issues in the society in different ways. For example, some people express their views by writing articles, giving speeches, and debating on various issues. Poems can also be used as a means of conveying ones feelings and attitudes about a given event or issue in a more passionate manner.

This is because the use of figures of speech in poetry makes the message being conveyed more clear and interesting to the audience. This paper will discuss the different attitudes adopted by four poets towards war.

“The Charge of the Light Brigade” is a poem that talks about the Crimean war. This war took place from 1853 to 1856. During this war, Britain and its allies fought against the Russians.

And much of the conflict took place in the Crimean Peninsula. The Battle of Balaclava was one of the popular events that took place during the war. The Russians were so amazed by the great courage demonstrated by the British Light Brigade, to an extent that they did not feel humiliated by the defeat. They instead blamed it on an error that was made by an army official.

The poet presents a glorifying perspective of the war by using an interesting beat, and narration about a noble heroism. The poet has also used a lot of imagery and metaphors in explaining the tragic events that Brigade experienced.

Further more, the tone of the poem has been developed using figures of speech. However, this poem has some contradictions. This is because it conveys a sense of glory and honor, and at the same time it talks about war and defeat (Probst 75).

“Concord Hymn” is a poem that was recited in Concord in 1837 to commemorate the role that was played by the people who lived in Concord in the “Battle of Concord Lexington”. This war took place during the American Revolution. This poem refers to the continuous struggle that North American colonies underwent in order to be emancipated from the British domination.

The poet has recognized the great determination of the Americans when they fought against the British. The poet has presented a mixture of somber and joyous mood in the poem. This makes the poem relevant to the ceremony which was meant to commemorate the war.

In the poem, the raising of flag symbolizes the great honoring of the people who died during the war and it also encourages the people who survived to continue fighting for more freedom. Although the language used in the poem is quite complicated, it is however a good way of expressing the important ideals of nationalism (Emmerson 4).

The poem “The Man He Killed” talks about meaningless nature of war, in which a soldier killed another simply on the basis that they were fighting on different fronts. The first verse suggests that the two soldiers hated each because of war and had they met elsewhere they could have been good friends.

The use of repetition in the poem is meant to justify the action of the soldier who killed his colleague because they were enemies. The narrator in this poem is trying to say that the action he took was unavoidable. The theme of the poem reveals the strange nature of war in which people are compelled to kill each other for no good reasons.

The use of conversation tone in the poem gives the impression that the soldier is trying to make us understand and accept his action. The language that was used in this poem is simple and easy to understand (Hardy 67). From the poem we learn that war affects the good relationship that people have.

The poem “Dulce ET Decorum Est” was written by Wilfred Owen who served as a captain in the British military. His aim for writing this poem was to show his disapproval of the notions about nationalism that were often spread by journalists.

He has the feeling that war is so terrible and against humanity. He also expressed his negative feelings a bout the impacts of war in the society and also on the soldiers (Kerr 18).

The above analyses of the four poems indicate the different attitudes of the poets towards war. However, Wilfred Owen in his poem “Dulce ET Decorum Est” has the most powerful sentiments a bout war. This is because he has used many strong poetic devices to show the brutal and horrifying nature of war experiences.

For example alliteration has been to make the poem easy to recite and memorize. Unlike the other poets, he has used his personal experience in war to show the effects of war on people and the soldiers. For example, he says that some soldiers are always brutally killed and they do not even get decent burials (Kerr 89).

Apart from this, their relatives suffer after losing their loved ones. Last but more importantly, Owen has tried to give a true account of the nature of war in contrast to the other poets who give justifications for war by talking about its glorification and honor.

Emmerson, Ralph. The concord hymn and other poems. New York: Dover Publishers, 1996. Print.

Hardy, Thomas. Penguin classics. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. Print.

Kerr, Wilfred. The works of Wilfred Owen. Hertfordshire: Words Worth, 1999. Print.

Probst, Robert. Response and analysis: teaching literature in secondary school . New York: Heinemann, 2004. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2024, March 31). War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/

"War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War." IvyPanda , 31 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War'. 31 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War." March 31, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/.

1. IvyPanda . "War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War." March 31, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War." March 31, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/.

• Bitterness and Cruelty of War: "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and "Facing It"
• Anti-War Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” and Dylan’s “Masters of War”
• Imagery in Owen Wilfred’s “Dulce et Decorum est” Poem
• "Dulce et Decorum Est" Poem by Wilfred Owen
• Owen’s "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth"
• Viktor Bout: Career in Illegal Arms Trafficking
• Wilfred Owen: romanticised and tender poetry
• The Life and Work of Wilfred Owen
• “Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen Literature Analysis
• “Disabled” by Wilfred Owen
• Medieval Poetry - The Expressions of the Romantic Love
• Honoring Fathers: "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays"
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10 books to add to your reading list in April

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Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your April reading list.

April’s book releases cover some difficult topics, including Salman Rushdie discussing his 2022 maiming, Leigh Bardugo’s fiction about the dark arts and Ada Limón’s poetry anthology about our fragile world. However, like April, there is also sunshine: Leif Enger’s wild Great Lakes love story, Helen Tworkov’s beautiful memoir of Buddhism and a collection of the inimitable Maggie Nelson’s essays. Happy reading, happy spring!

I Cheerfully Refuse: A Novel By Leif Enger Grove Press: 336 pages, $28 (April 2)

An unusual and meaningful surprise awaits readers of Enger’s latest, which takes place largely on Lake Superior, as a man named Rainy tries to reunite with his beloved wife, Lark. While the world around this couple, a dystopian near-future American where billionaires control everything, could not be bleaker, the author’s retelling of the myth of Orpheus (who went to the underworld to rescue his wife) contains the authentic hope of a born optimist.

The Familiar: A Novel By Leigh Bardugo Flatiron Books: 400 pages, $30 (April 9)

Bardugo departs from novels of dark academia in a standalone to make the hairs on your neck stand up, set in 16th century Spain. A hidden Sephardic Jew and scullery maid named Luzia Cotado matches wits with fellow servant Guillén Santángel. Luzia discovers a secret of Guillén’s, but she’s already fallen in love with him. And because he knows hers, too, they might both avoid the Spanish Inquisition. It’s a gorgeous tale of enchantments both supernatural and earthly.

The Sleepwalkers: A Novel By Scarlett Thomas Simon & Schuster: 304 pages, $28 (April 9)

A couple honeymoons at a Greek resort. What could go wrong? In Thomas’ hands, plenty – especially as the author has never written a comfortable story; her books, from “PopCo ” to “Oligarchy,” crackle with unreliable characters, as well as big philosophical ideas. In this case, the new marriage’s breakdown is chronicled through letters between the spouses, and sometimes bits of ephemera, that ultimately untangle a dark mystery relating to the title.

The Garden: A Novel By Clare Beams Doubleday: 304 pages, $28 (April 10)

Few novels of literary fiction are written as well as “The Garden,” let alone given its sadly relevant retro setting, a 1940s country-estate obstetrical program. Irene Willard walks through its gates having endured five miscarriages; pregnant again, she and her war-veteran husband George desperately hope for a live birth. But as Irene discovers more about the woman who controls all here, Dr. Bishop, she fears carrying to term as much as she once feared pregnancy loss.

Reboot: A Novel By Justin Taylor Pantheon: 304 pages, $28 (April 23)

David Crader, former teen TV heartthrob, just wants to reboot his career when his old show “Rev Beach” has a moment. His life has devolved through substance abuse, divorce and underemployment. But when he and colleagues launch a remake, devolution continues: The protagonist’s struggles are mirrored by climate-change issues, from flooding to wildfires. Despite that darkness, Taylor’s gift for satire might make this a must-read for 2024 beach bags.

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World By Ada Limón (Editor) Milkweed Editions: 176 pages, $25 (April 2)

A wondrous artist herself, Limón is currently poet laureate of the United States, and this anthology is part of her signature project, “You Are Here,” which will also feature poetry as public art in seven national parks. Released in conjunction with the Library of Congress, the collection features 50 previously unpublished poems by luminaries including Jericho Brown, Joy Harjo, Carl Phillips and Diane Seuss, each focusing on a piece of regional landscape.

Like Love: Essays and Conversations By Maggie Nelson Graywolf Press: 336 pages, $32 (April 2)

While all of the pieces in Nelson’s new book have previously been published elsewhere, they’re made fresh here both through being collected and through their chronological placement. Readers can practically watch Nelson’s incisive mind growing and changing as she speaks with colleagues such as Hilton Als and Judith Butler, or as she writes about queerness, motherhood, violence, the lyrics of Prince and the devastating loss of a friend.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder By Salman Rushdie Random House: 204 pages, $28 (April 16)

On Aug. 12, 2022, the author Salman Rushdie was speaking at upstate New York’s Chautauqua festival when a man rushed the stage and attempted to murder him. Rushdie, a target of Iranian religious leaders since 1989, was permanently injured. In this book, he shares his experience for the first time, having said that this was essential for him to write. In this way, he answers violence with art, once again reminding us all that freedom of expression must be protected.

Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America By Helen Tworkov St. Martin’s Essentials: 336 pages, $29 (April 16)

Tworkov, founder of the magazine Tricycle, chronicles her move from a 1960s young-adult interest in Buddhism to travels through Asia and deep study in the United States of the different strands that follow the Buddha’s teachings. Tworkov mentions luminaries such as the artist Richard Serra, the composer Charles Mingus and the Dalai Lama, but she’s not name-dropping. Instead, she’s strewing fragrant petals from her singular path to mindfulness that may help us find ours.

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War By Erik Larson Crown: 592 pages, $35 (April 30)

Even diehard Civil War aficionados will learn from Larson’s look at the six months between Lincoln’s 1860 election and the surrender of Union troops under Maj. Robert Anderson at Charleston’s Ft. Sumter. Larson details Anderson’s secret Christmas redeployment and explores this individual’s contradictions as a former slave owner who loyally follows Lincoln’s orders. The author also shares first-person perspective from the famous diaries of the upper-class Southerner Mary Chesnut. All together, the book provides a riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult.

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Guest Essay

Israel Must No Longer Live by the Sword

By Joshua Leifer

Mr. Leifer is author of the forthcoming “Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life.”

The moment Israel’s devastating war in the Gaza Strip ends, the unfinished conflict within Israel over its future will begin again. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners know this. That may be, in part, why they have set the improbable aim of “total victory” as the war’s ultimate objective, and why they have so far refused any deal that would end the fighting in exchange for returning the roughly 100 hostages still in Hamas captivity. After almost six months, this war is already Israel’s longest since Israel’s war of independence.

The assault on Gaza has nearly frozen Israel’s fractious political system. Once-ferocious debates have largely been put on hold. Even Mr. Netanyahu’s most vociferous critics seek to avoid being painted as treasonous during a time when massive banners declaring “Together We Will Win” hang from skyscrapers. For months all of the country seem to have rallied behind the war. In service of keeping the war going, and unencumbered by any real opposition, Mr. Netanyahu also steered his country into a head-on collision with its most significant backer, the United States, putting his short-term political considerations ahead of the country’s long-term interests.

In the weeks following Hamas’s gruesome Oct. 7 incursion, Mr. Netanyahu’s political future looked bleak. The prime minister had long boasted that his more than 15 years in power had been Israel’s most secure; Hamas’s attack shattered that legacy. The man who described himself as “ Mr. Security ,” who said he hoped to be remembered as “ the protector of Israel ,” appeared responsible for the deadliest single day in Israel’s history. Even as military and intelligence leaders have since stepped up to take the blame, Mr. Netanyahu has pointedly refused to acknowledge his own culpability.

A poll published in January found that only 15 percent of Israelis wanted him to remain in office after the war. And, in another recent poll , by Israel’s Channel 13, most Israelis said they did not trust Mr. Netanyahu’s handling of the war. Support for his right-wing Likud party has likewise cratered.

And yet, Mr. Netanyahu remains in power, largely unchallenged.

For roughly 39 weeks before the start of the war, hundreds of thousands of Israelis in cities across the country demonstrated every Saturday night against the Netanyahu government’s hard-right agenda, and in particular against its plan to all but completely undercut the country’s judiciary. After Oct. 7, at the very moment Mr. Netanyahu became more unpopular than ever before, the grass-roots movement that had emerged to challenge his government fell nearly silent.

At the same time, Mr. Netanyahu skillfully outmaneuvered his most serious rival, Benny Gantz, the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff , who brought his National Unity party into Mr. Netanyahu’s emergency coalition following the Hamas attacks as a show of patriotic responsibility. The war’s transition from immense aerial bombardment and full-scale ground invasion to a grinding counterinsurgency has kept Mr. Gantz and his party from leaving — and enabled Mr. Netanyahu to head off a new round of elections.

But the unsettled and fundamental debates about Israel’s character cannot be put on hold forever. As Israelis begin to adjust to a state of permanent war — the horrific violence and incipient famine in Gaza receive little coverage in mainstream Israeli media — the return to a modicum of normalcy has started to morph into a return to politics-as-usual.

Slowly, over the last few weeks, tens of thousands of Israelis have begun to demonstrate again, mainly calling for a return of the roughly 100 hostages who remain Hamas captives. Some have begun to call for Mr. Netanyahu’s resignation, but their numbers are nowhere near the crowds that took to Israel’s streets last year. With the largest antigovernment demonstrations since Oct. 7 over this past weekend, the opposition movement may finally have a chance to press on the fundamental weaknesses in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. If there is to be any hope of setting a new course for the country, it will require bringing the current government down.

The prewar protests were given their heft and leverage by the more than 10,000 reservists who pledged not to serve if the so-called judicial overhaul plan went through. With the Hamas incursion, many were called back to their brigades. As the war has shifted, and many have come home, reservists have largely not returned to the protest barricades. Instead, they have headed back to work, to businesses and family lives put on pause. Other former protesters simply support the war more than Mr. Netanyahu’s ouster. In a series of interviews with the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz, leaders of several protest groups expressed disappointment with the reality that the public had become too demoralized to continue its fight against Mr. Netanyahu’s agenda.

Mr. Gantz, one of the few Israeli leaders who could unseat Mr. Netanyahu, has remained in the emergency war coalition not only because of his continuing support for the war but also to act as a counterweight to Mr. Netanyahu’s extremist coalition partners. Yet, as a result, Mr. Gantz’s party has lent both stability and a veneer of cross-partisan legitimacy to Mr. Netanyahu’s unruly, hard-right coalition. If Mr. Gantz began his political career to challenge Mr. Netanyahu, he and his party have now become the prime minister’s political lifeline.

Still, with or without the fig leaf of unity that Mr. Gantz provides, Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition is unstable. The greatest threat to its continuity is the looming crisis over military draft exemptions for Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox religious men, which could divide the ruling coalition between its hawks, who would like to see them drafted, and the most religious rabbis, who view compulsory service for men in the community as a disruption to their way of life.

Mr. Netanyahu also faces emergent threats from the far right — in particular, from Itamar Ben-Gvir who has been preparing to challenge Mr. Netanyahu for having been too soft on Hamas and, he claims, too deferential to U.S. calls for restraint. Mr. Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party was the sole faction in the coalition to vote against a cease-fire deal in November, which led to the release of 105 hostages held by Hamas. Mr. Ben-Gvir has also threatened to pull his party out of the governing coalition in the event of a more comprehensive agreement, which would most likely require releasing hundreds of Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons. “A reckless deal = collapse of the government,” Mr. Ben-Gvir tweeted in January.

Mr. Netanyahu’s fear of being outflanked from the right may help explain why he has engineered an acrimonious public spat with the Biden administration, despite Israel’s near-total dependence on U.S. military aid. Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, and Amos Harel, a military affairs analyst for Ha’aretz, have both observed that Mr. Netanyahu’s bluster over an impending incursion into Rafah — the city in southern Gaza where more than one million displaced Palestinians have taken shelter — derives more from Mr. Netanyahu’s personal and political considerations than urgent strategic imperatives. Not only does he want to keep the war going, he wants to rally his hard-line base by appearing to stand up to U.S. pressure.

Even within Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, there are whispers of “the day after Bibi.” Enterprising politicians have begun to jockey for the place of his successor. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who Mr. Netanyahu fired and then unfired at the height of the protests last year, has attempted to stake out an even more hawkish stance on the war to appeal to right-wing voters; it was Mr. Gallant who reportedly pushed for a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon after Oct. 7. Nir Barkat, the former mayor of Jerusalem and Israel’s richest politician , has tried to take Mr. Netanyahu to task publicly for mishandling the economic crisis that has accompanied the war. And, while much of Likud has embraced Mr. Netanyahu’s style of right-wing populism, a handful of nominally moderate Likudniks have grown tired of him, even if they have little disagreement with his execution of the war.

The departure of any fragment of Mr. Netanyahu’s prewar coalition — be it the far right or disgruntled Likud members — could collapse the current government and prompt new elections. But even if they wanted to oust Mr. Netanyahu, current polling shows that if elections were held tomorrow, his coalition would lose its majority. That’s a situation the far right and religious nationalists want to avoid.

The movement in the streets must make the persistence of this coalition impossible. Unlike during the weeks that preceded Oct. 7, there is now a popular consensus that the current government has lost its mandate. Its ministers are despised. The protest movement, therefore, will need to channel this rage and return, at least, to the strength it showed before the war. The movement’s leaders will have to do what they have so far refused — to articulate and present an actionable alternative vision for the country that breaks with Mr. Netanyahu’s view that Israel must “ live forever by the sword ”— if they are to seize the opportunity that the fall of his government might present.

The movement, in other words, must do something that has become only more difficult in the atmosphere of fear and conformity that has followed Oct. 7. It must be brave.

Joshua Leifer is the author of the forthcoming book “Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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