Can Poetry Matter - Part 2

November 30, 2002 8:45 AM

Can Poetry Matter - Part 2(nyt reg req) "Today photography is considered by many to be the most effective way to convey the plight of war's combatants, victims and mourners. But during World War I it was through poetry that many Britons came to share the horror of life and death in the muddy trenches of northern France.....To this day, every time Britons go to war, the opening lines of Rupert Brooke's 1914 poem, "The Soldier," are remembered: "If I should die, think only this of me:/That there's some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England."..."
posted by Voyageman (10 comments total)

happening

they're writing on my hand
'eleven million dead'
they're showing me photographs
of raped teenagers
-please let me go
I've got to get
to the other side of town
they've given me the address
of an orphanage
and the hunger statistics
with eyes closed
-please let me go
I have to catch the bus
it's only ten stops the bus
I start to shout
knowing I'll be late
very
very late


Ion Stratan
[1983]

Romanian poet
posted by plexi at 9:14 AM on November 30, 2002

My students usually like Siegfried Sassoon's "They".
posted by thomas j wise at 9:16 AM on November 30, 2002

I don't really think that the two (poetry and photography) can be compared as a medium to convey the plight of those at war, as they are not mutually exclusive. To me, I suppose when I think of those at war, two things come to mind. One are the lines of "Dulce et Decorum est" by Wilfred Owen, and the other is an photograph from the Vietnam war of a girl, naked and running terrified down a road amid the carnage and detritus of war. Both paint an accurate and stark view of combat, but both, I'd say, are equally effective at getting the point across.
posted by dazed_one at 9:17 AM on November 30, 2002

The My Lai Massacre is still shocking. The Kent State photo of protesters shot by Ohio National Guardsmen is heartbreaking.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:56 AM on November 30, 2002

photograph from the Vietnam war of a girl, naked and running

You mean napalmed and running
posted by the fire you left me at 9:59 AM on November 30, 2002

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Randall Jarrell
posted by katy_ at 10:42 AM on November 30, 2002

But during World War I it was through poetry that many Britons came to share the horror of life and death in the muddy trenches of northern France.....

The casualty figures for the Biritish Empire in the Great War were over 900,000 dead and 2,000,000 wounded. The horrors of life and death in the trenches may been conveyed to the homefront via poetry during the war. Afterwards it was conveyed through the visible loss of an entire generation, who came back maimed and mutilated or not at all.

I leave the radio on the BBC overseas broadcast our local NPR station carries after midnight, leave it on all night and it drifts in and out of my dreams. Goodbye To All That was read chapter by consecutive chapter recently--what an incredibly sad book:

I saw a man lying on his face in a machine-gun shelter. I stopped and said: 'Stand-to, there.' I flashed my torch on him and saw that his foot was bare. The machine-gunner beside him said: 'No good talking to him, sir.' I asked: 'What's wrong? What's he taken his boot and sock off for?' I was ready for anything odd in the trenches. 'Look for yourself. sir,' he said. I shook the man by the arm and noticed suddenly that the back of his head was blown out. The first corpse that I saw in France was this suicide. He had taken off his boot and sock to pull the trigger of his rifle with his toe; the muzzle was in his mouth. 'Why did he do it?' I said. 'He was in the last push, sir, and that sent him a bit queer, and on top of that he got bad news from Limerick about his girl and another chap.' He was not a Welshman, but belonged to the Munsters; their machine-guns were at the extreme left of our company. The suicide had already been reported and two Irish officers came up. 'We've had two or three of these lately,' one of them told me. Then he said to the other: 'While I remember, Callaghan, don't forget to write to his next-of-kin. Usual sort of letter, cheer them up, tell them he died a soldier's death, anything you like. I'm not going to report it as suicide.'
posted by y2karl at 11:06 AM on November 30, 2002

More from the BBC. Iranian and Iraqi poetry.
posted by four panels at 11:39 AM on November 30, 2002

katy_, I had forgotten about that Jarrell poem. It's like getting punched in the stomach.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:59 PM on November 30, 2002

The Fire You Left Me: yes, sorry for leaving out the napalm bit, but you know the one I mean, right?
posted by dazed_one at 4:53 PM on November 30, 2002