MetaFilter posts tagged with Poetry and War

The Poet's Obligation

adamvasco — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:31:49 -0800

Exit wounds: - It is the poet's obligation, wrote Plato, to bear witness. With the official inquiry into Iraq imminent and the war in Afghanistan returning dead teenagers; Carol Duffy, recently elected UK Poet Laureate invited a range of her fellow poets to bear witness, each in their own way, to these matters of war. More about the poets inside: The Poets: - Clare Shaw; Jane Weir; Jo Shapcott; Carole Satyamurti; Sean O'Brien; Robert Minhinnick; Daljit Nagra; Alan Jenkins; Matthew Hollis; Ian Duhig; Amanda Dalton; Gillian Clarke; Fred D'Aguiar; John Agard; Carola Luther; and Paul Muldoon It's getting dark, but not dark enough to see An exit wound as an exit strategy.

Robinson Jeffers

homunculus — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:05:54 -0800

Robinson Jeffers: Peace Poet. [Via Hit & Run.] Previous post on Jeffers.

The larks, still bravely singing, fly / Scarce heard amid the guns below.

mek — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:57:18 -0800

The poppy is bitterly ironic this Remembrance Day. Borrowed from John McRae's classic In Flanders' Fields, the poppy has shifted from a symbolic meaning to the central subject of an ongoing conflict. As international intervention in Afghanistan continues, opium production has reached record-breaking heights, with this single country now producing 90% of the world's total supply (utterly dwarfing global licit supply). Meanwhile, the world suffers a global opiate shortage(pdf), Canada's heroin maintenance project is threatened by politics, and the National Review of Medicine suggests that prescription opiates are far more dangerous than the "usual suspects".

Here, Bullet

homunculus — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 11:27:47 -0800

The horror of Iraq, in poetry. [Via.]

Bill Moyers speech at West Point

russilwvong — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:03:07 -0800

Bill Moyers speech at West Point on "The Meaning of Freedom." I repeat: These are not palatable topics for soldiers about to go to war; I would like to speak of sweeter things. But freedom means we must face reality: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Free enough, surely, to think for yourselves about these breaches of contract that crudely undercut the traditions of an army of free men and women who have bound themselves voluntarily to serve the nation even unto death. Previously on MetaFilter: after 9/11, inequality, religion and democracy, the environment, right-wing media, public broadcasting. Wikipedia.

Babbling Bobster Beatnik Poetry

y2karl — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 10:36:08 -0800

His fog, his amphetamines and his pearls
Lofi shot off the monitor at the recent EMP exhibit, the entire footage of an Eat The Document outtake recently edited by Martin Scorcese for No Direction Home.

I don't entirely get the Chaplinesque--To paraphrase crunchland, Hey, Skeezix--it's a talkie...

Seamus Heaney and the Soul of Antigone

matteo — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 11:09:59 -0800

Love that can't be withstood,
Love that scatters fortunes,
Love like a green fern shading
The cheek of a sleeping girl.
Seamus Heaney's search for the soul of Antigone.
(more inside, with Christopher Logue)

Poets Against the War

fold_and_mutilate — Sat, 22 Mar 2003 12:20:57 -0800

Poets Against The War
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
We extend towards you our white hand
Once embraced by many in vain:
Indian, African, Vietnamese,
And washed clean of their colored red stain.

Harold Pinter's War Poem

MiguelCardoso — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:28:24 -0800

Democracy

There's no escape.
The big pricks are out.
They'll fuck everything in sight.
Watch your back.
Harold Pinter
[More inside]

100 poets can't be wrong

jokeefe — Fri, 31 Jan 2003 21:06:10 -0800

Poets Against the War At Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War, the story of the recent cancellation (link to Canada's Globe and Mail), by Laura Bush, of a Feb. 12 poetry symposium at the White House. From the G and M article: Stanley Kunitz, poet laureate 2000-01, told reporters, "I think there was a general feeling that the current administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the centre of the poetic impulse."
Hamill is gathering contributions from poets around the world, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Yusef Komunyakaa and W.S. Merwin, National Book Award winner Marilyn Hacker, novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, and Adrienne Rich.
This post is not intended the fan the flames of 'War on Iraq: Yes or No', but to explore Kunitz's contention: Is there at the centre of the poetic impulse a particular type of humanitarianism? Is there a space for poets and poetry in political debate? Are poets the "unacknowledged legislators of the world"? [more inside]

Can Poetry Matter - Part 2

Voyageman — Sat, 30 Nov 2002 08:45:14 -0800

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."..."

PWA_BadBoy — Sun, 11 Nov 2001 00:51:46 -0800

In Flanders Fields - by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

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.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

MetaFilter readers wherever you are, please take a moment of silence to honour those who gave their lives so that we could live ours.