War poet

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The term war poet came into currency during and after World War I. A number of poets writing in English had been soldiers, and had written about their experiences of war. Quite a number had died, most famously Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley. Others such as Siegfried Sassoon had survived, but made a reputation based on scathing poetry written from the disabused point of view of the trench soldier who had lost faith in his military superiors.

At the time the term soldier poet was also used, but then dropped out of favour. The evolution of the concept was connected to a distinction drawn, between poets who were anti-war in attitude, and more traditional war poetry.

World War I

There was probably as much poetry of quality written on the German side of the Western Front; but it was in English poetry, such as that of Wilfred Owen, that the war poem became an established genre marker and attracted growing popular interest. Americans and Canadians contributed notable work (John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields which is on the Canadian $10 bill); the French had their own war poetry, too, as did the Italians, most notably in Giuseppe Ungaretti. According to Patrick Bridgwater in The German Poets of the First World War, the closest comparison to Owen would be Anton Schnack; and Schnack's only peer would be August Stramm.

It is perhaps not a well-defined question, what makes a war poet (compare, say, Brooke and Georg Trakl). The public may have seen war poems as reportage and direct emotional links to the soldier.

Robert H. Ross^[1] characterises 'war poets' as a subgroup of the Georgian Poetry writers: those who were in uniform (including therefore Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon).

Robert Graves served in the trenches and survived, David Jones also; Graves did not use war experience as poetic material (making it autobiography in Goodbye to All That), or, more accurately, later suppressed what he had made of it; and Jones postponed its use, incorporating it into modernist forms. These and other WWI poets are listed here: World War I poets.

The Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War produced a substantial volume^[2] of poetry in English and, of course, Spanish and other languages — there were English-speaking poets serving Ireland and the Spanish Civil Waron both sides.

World War II

By the time of World War II the role of 'war poet' was so well-established in the public mind that 'where are the war poets?' became a topic of discussion. The Times Literary Supplement ran an editorial 'To the Poets of 1940' right at the end of 1939 (still during the phony war, therefore). Robert Graves gave a radio talk 'Why has this War produced no War Poets?' in October 1941. Stephen Spender also replied at about the same time, T. S. Eliot a year later.

Alun Lewis and Keith Douglas are the standard critical choices amongst British war poets of that time, and Karl Shapiro made a reputation based on poetry written during the Pacific war; there was probably more heavyweight poetry written in French from 1939-1945, than in English. The reason may be to do with the availability of radio journalism and the fact that soldiers spent less of their time sitting in trenches waiting for something to happen.

The expectation of war poetry can be noted in a character from the C. S. Forester novel The Ship who is a poet serving in a Royal Navy ship in the Mediterranean around 1942, and who is killed in action. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem made use of war poem texts, as does Robert Steadman's "In Memoriam". In Britten's Requiem are interspersed among the latin texts some poems by Wilfred Owen.

Later wars

There has been little recognition of war poetry from any subsequent conflict, certainly when compared with novels. That is not to say, at all, that such conflicts have not affected poets and what they write.

Jay Nemeth's debut collection, War of Vietnam, won the 1972 Yale Younger Poets Award. The collection's various vignettes use colloquial speech to document a soldier's experience in Vietnam. It was the first collection of poems to emerge from the war.

Vietnam Poet Earl E. Martin wrote "A Poet Goes to War."

Bozeman: Big Sky Books, Montana State University, (1970). 16mo. Wraps. 78 p .

"After a few poems about military training and about being stationed first in Korea, more than half of the book deals with Vietnam. It shows particular attention to authentic detail: self-dissociation in a combat setting, Hispanic and black comrades, loss of innocence, ears as trophies, jungle bunkers, piss tubes, rats, insects, monsoons, survival. The poet served in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968" - Newman

References

• Jon Silkin (1972), Out of Battle: The Poetry of the Great War
• Pinaki Roy (Edited by Nivedita Choudhury and with an Introduction by James Scott Campbell) (forthcoming) (2009), The Scarlet Critique: A Critical Anthology of War Poetry

To see war poetry about the Iraq War, see Gregory Robert Samuels 'War Poems from Iraq' or go to www.warpoemsfromiraq.com

Notes

External links

• The Poetry of the Boer War
• War Poems From Iraq
• War Poets Association
• The First World War Poetry Digital Archive
• The pro-war 1917 pamphlet Pro Patria by Philadelphia poet Florence Earle Coates (1850-1927)