Poetry war

POETRY--WAR
Poetry war PHILIP LARKIN (1922-):
• Oxford
• reaction to 1940s' style of poetry:
o 1940s: apocalyptic rhetoric, extravagances
o style: simple, quiet, anti-romantic
o influence = Hardy
  simple, colloquial diction,
 short lines,
 traditional poetic forms,
 commonplace subjects,
 quiet pessimistic tone
• “Homage to a Government”
o 1974
o bring the soldiers home early from war because of $$
o BUT: you'll have to send them back again soon because the job wasn't done right the 1st time
o IRAQ WAR (to the Democrats and anti-war protesters)

SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886-1967) *soldier-poet
• from spoiled rich boy to veteran
• from idealist to satiric realist, war poet
• most widely read poet of WWI
• style = satiric, direct, epigrammatic colloquial
• tone = satiric, angry, bitter (to anyone ignorant of the realities of war-politicians, journalists, civilians)
Poetry war WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918):
*soldier-poet
• British infantry soldier
• killed in action (shortly after this was written, shortly before the end of the war)
• although his goal = to show the truth of war (not to write poetry), his work shows skill, finesse, serious contemplation, revision
• STYLE =
o blunt,
o ironic,
o graphically detailed & explicit;
o sounds created by
 assonance,
 alliteration, &
 consonance
• only 4 published during life
• collection edited by Sigfried Sassoon
“Dulce et Decorum Est” Horace’s Odes; “the old lie” = Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori = “It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country”

“DULCE ET DECORUM EST”
(1920)
World War I
• arrangement = effect
• itemized list of front-line horrors
• TITLE:
o from Horace’s Odes
 Odes = well known to British schoolboys
  Horace’s Latin phrase = looks back to his school days ****
• innocence
• the mind-washing of the young
• the lies we tell children (@war, God, Christmas, family,…)
• establishment of gender-roles
o “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”
o “It is sweet and fitting (honorable) to die for one’s country”
o Owen calls “The old lie” told “with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory”
o soldier’s death by poison gas (green, mustard gas) is NOT “sweet” or “fitting” or honorable, humane

o

*ADDRESSEE =
• “you”, “my friend” (see “dedication above)
• *some manuscripts with DEDICATIONS:
o “To Jessie Pope” OR “To a certain Poetess”
 Jessie Pope
• (1868 - 1941)
• English poetess, writer, and journalist
• writer of patriotic verse during WWI (best known for)
• not only poetess Jessie Pope, but also similar poets throughout time (past, present, future)
• **Owens = condemning the ancient practice of glorifying war
o epic poems, poems, plays, stories, novels
o popular songs, movies (John Wayne movies), heroic monuments
o this practice has fueled the ignorant enthusiasm of young men desperately seeking glory (“desperate glory”)
o see Hardy’s “Channel Firing”

*Paul Fussell: The Great War and Modern Memory:
• notes the pre-war diction used with “high zest” that the WWI poets changed
• “guilty” writers: George Alfred Henty (boys books), Rider Haggard (male romances), Robert Bridges (poems), Tennyson (Arthurian romances), William Morris (pseudo-medieval romances)

• examples of high diction toward war:
• friend = comrade
• horse = steed, charger
• enemy = foe, host
• danger = peril
• to conquer = to vanquish
• to be earnestly brave = gallant
• to be cheerfully brave = plucky
• to be stolidly brave = staunch
• the battlefield dead = the fallen
• the front = the field
• obedient soldiers = the brave
• warfare = strife
• to die = to perish
• draft-notice = the summons
• to enlist = to join the colors
• one's death = one's fate
• sky = the heavens
• what is contemptible = base
• legs & arms = limbs
• dead bodies = ashes, dust
• blood of young men = "the red / Sweet wine of youth" (R. Brooke)
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SUBJECT ("plot") = MUSTARD GAS attack
• “five-nines” = shells with poison gas
• poison gas =
o 1st used by the Germans, then the Allies
o immoral (seen by most as)
o took up to 12 hours for its effects to become apparent
o rotted the body inside & out
o skin blistered, eyes became extremely painful, stomach = nauseated, vomiting
o *attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane (*DROWNING*)
o severe pain, thrashing, screaming, beyond endurance
o death took up to 4-5 weeks!!!
• tired troops trudging through the trenches, mire (“THINGS THEY CARRIED”)
• mud literally sucked the boots off their feet
• mud = mixed with blood
• men = shells : “tired” exhausted
o shells = exhausted their fuel flying through the air
o men = so tired they do not even react (hear) the gas canisters landing behind them
• one soldier: fails to get his gas mask on in time, becomes poisoned by the mustard gas, “drowning” in the green mist
• his death throes
• corpse thrown onto a wagon, speaker walking behind wagon looking at the corpse
• these IMAGES haunt the speaker/persona in his dreams/nightmares

IMAGERY:
• poisoning of mustard gas, death throes, corpse
• sea, swimming, drowning

PARADOXES:
• “blood-shod”
• “drunk with fatigue”
• “ecstasy of fumbling”
SIMILES—METAPHORS:
• Bent double like old beggars under sacks
• coughing like hags
• Men marched asleep...blood-shod...drunk with fatigue
• blind..deaf
• ecstasy of fumbling
• floundering like a man n fire or lime
• as under a green sea
• like a devil's sick of sin
• obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues

* “THINGS THEY CARRIED” *
* “WAR IS KIND”
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“TO LUCASTA, On Going to the Wars”
(1649)
AUTHOR
• Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)
• Cavalier poet
• autobiographical: Lovelace fought as a Royalist, for Charles I and the monarchy during the Puritan Revolution (1642-1645, 1640-1660)

SUBJECT, SCENE:
• farewell, going off to battle
• argument
• she tells him he = "unkind"
• Poem = is his response to that accusation

TONE vs. MEANING:
• tone = light & witty; serious love, she'd be flattered to receive the poem
• message = serious, farewell

*APOSTROPHE = to his wife, his "Sweet"
she = sweet, pure, virginal, chaste ("Sweet," "nunnery," "chaste")
*METAPHOR: her bosom = "nunnery"

*loyalty to wife VS. loyalty to country and king
• HONOR over personal love
• love = personal, selfish; based on a higher love
• honor =
o selfless, the greater good
o his new "mistress" his "inconstancy" his "stronger faith"
o *PERSONIFICATION = war = "mistress", going to war = cheating/infidelity

• his honor on the battlefield = her honor too
• he = honorable man, that's why she loves him, that's why he loves her BUT must now leave her
*IRONY:
• b/c he = honorable, he loves her so much BUT b/che = honorable, he must now leave her
• b/c he = honorable, he cannot ignore his call to DUTY, he cannot not serve his country -- the "honorable" thing to do
• b/c he = honorable, he is able to love her as much as he does AND write this love POEM to her
• b/c he = honorable, she too will be honorable (even if,esp. if, he dies in battle)

WAR =
• contrasted to her, everything she is not
• impurity, insanity: not chaste, not quiet mind
• "A sword, a horse, a shield"
• a new mistress, "home-wrecker"

*SYNDOCHE:
• "chaste breast" = her purity, innocence, devotion
• "quiet mind" = her strength, peacefulness, sanity
• "sword, horse, shield" = war

*Toby Keith's "American Soldier"
________

“WAR IS KIND”
(1899)
Stephen Crane
• his best & most reprinted poem

• tone = bitter irony
• hyperbole: exaggeration for emphasis (to know that he is being ironic)

• imagery = "bright splendid shroud" = son's dress uniform
• alliteration
• refrain
• paradox: flag = "the unexplained glory"

• structure:
• refrain
• stanzas 1, 3, 5 =
o spoken to those who survive war BUT lose those they love
o 3 long lines, 2 short lines
• stanzas 2, 4 =
o spoken to the military
o *change in METER = echoes cadence of marching men
o indented
• Final Line: "A field where a thousand corpses lie"
o *incongruity between Sound & Meaning  reinforces Irony
o changes cadence
o "lie" in death & Owen's "The old lie" ("Dulce et Decorum est")**
___

“NEXT TO OF COURSE GOD AMERICA”
(1926)
ee cummings

*parody
• parody of political speeches, exaggerated & often contradictory rhetoric of patriotic diatribes
• form = meaning:
o empty or missing punctuation AND meaningless line breaks = meaninglessness of speech; smooth flow of nonsense coming from the speaker's mouth
o patriotic clichés =
 jumbled together
 contradictory

* "GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE"
* "Dulce"
* "War Is Kind"
___

“THE DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER”
(1945)
Randall Jarrell

*IMAGERY:
• the "belly" of the plane
• rounded bulb
• small person inside
• moving around
• = BABY in the womb, unborn animal
• end = "Abortion"

• the "State" (see Auden's "Unknown Citizen"*)
• interrelation of sleep & waking, dreams & nightmares, life & death

* "THE GRAVE" (imagery, womb)
___

“CHANNEL FIRING”
(1914)
Thomas Hardy
• SPEAKER: one of the buried dead in a churchyard
• SETTING: churchyard, as “gunnery practice out at sea” booms
• the dead think it’s Judgment Day, so they sit upright
• dogs, mice, worms, cows stop what they’re doing
• GOD: speaks to the dead
o not Judgment Day
o just practicing war
o “The world is as it used to be.”
 mankind seeking better way to kill (“to make / Red war yet redder”)
 mankind = mad (“Mad as hatters”)
 kill in the name of Christ BUT do no more for Christ’s sake than the “helpless” dead could
• another of the dead asks: “Will the world ever saner be?”
• 18th Century = “our indifferent century”
• another dead speaks: (Parson Thirdly) I should have stuck to drinking beer and smoking pipes instead of preaching for 40 years….didn’t do any good, didn’t change anyone (“Eleanor Rigby”)
• “readiness to avenge”:
o go to war at the slightest insult; looking for a reason; thin-skinned
o (GIRARD: blood feuds, violent reciprocity)
• monuments =
o heard far inland  “great guns” = loud, powerful
o look back in time; man has always been this way
o see Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum est” condemning the ancient practice of glorifying war

o Stourton Tower: monument to Alfred the Great, who defeated the Vikings in 879
o Camelot: King Arthur’s legendary city for his court
o Stonehenge: monolithic stones in circle, on Salisbury Plain

• ANTI-WAR:
o seek new ways to kill
 redder war
 “readiness to avenge”
o kill in the name of Christ
o mankind = crazy: “mad as hatters” & “ever saner be”
o religion = a waste since man is hell-bent on killing, making war
o history = of warfare
Poetry war

“THE MAN HE KILLED”
(1902)
Thomas Hardy
• under different circumstances, he & “enemy” would have been “friends”
• would have bought the guy a beer
• he enlisted just as I did, because I was out of work at the time
• BUT I shot him dead because he shot at me, he was my enemy (“foe”)
• ANTI-WAR: the fight is between rulers & governments, not the countrymen, the ordinary people who must fight their wars & die for their disputes
• the average person, country person:
o “some old ancient inn”
o “nipperkin”
o enlisted b/c “out of work” & “had sold his traps”
o “half-a-crown” ($.60)
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“PATTERNS”
(1916)
Amy Lowell
• she replaced traditional forms with the suggestiveness of vivid imagery
• style = like impressionist painting or composer
• poem = woman’s walk down a “garden-path” in a heavy, stiff gown
• her clothes = contrast to nature: unrestrained, free, passionate
• although nature is sometimes restrained by landscaping, gardens
• laden with imagery, natural
• Speaker = fiancée of soldier killed in combat (to have been married within a month’s time)
• he = colonel, killed in war “Fighting with the Duke in Flanders”
• her future:
o she will never love again,
o she will never have sex
o she will hide behind her stiff façade (gown), no embrace, comfort
• “PATTERNS”:
o garden, nature
o her dress
o unhappy endings for soldiers-fiancées, former killed in war
o war
• ANTI-WAR:
o questions the pattern of war
o see Hardy’s “Channel Firing” and Owens’ “ Dulce et Decorum est”
___
“GRASS”
(1918)
Carl Sandburg
• American (Illinois)
• day laborer, soldier, political activist, journalist, historian (6-volume biography of Lincoln)
•  color his poetry
• FREE VERSE:
o no rhythm
o no rhyme
o like blank verse, does not rhyme
o unlike blank verse, not written in iambic pentameter
o rhythm alters throughout poem
o BUT: has patterns that make a unified whole
 rather than conventional rhyme pattern
 instead, has recurrence (with variations) of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns
 rather than the conventional unit = foot/line
 instead, has units that are longer = multiple lines, paragraphs, strophes
 *UNIT* determined by rhythm & thought, not by foot or syllabic count
• “Fog” (1916) fog = cat, see TS Eliot’s “Love Song of JAP”
• “grass”:
o “covers all”
o blots from memory war, blood, pain, death
o doesn’t take long to forget: 2 or 10 years
• Austerlitz & Waterloo: battlefields of Napoleonic Wars
• Gettysburg: Civil War battlefield
• Ypres & Verdun: WWI battlefields
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