Mods: If BraveSirRubin Shits up this thread too (like this one: http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=373234&f=51)...can you delete his posts or just close this thread...thanks. Exit wounds: Poets, from ancient times, have written about war. It is the poet's obligation, wrote Plato, to bear witness. In modern times, the young soldiers of the first world war turned the horrors they endured and witnessed in trench combat - which slaughtered them in their millions - into a vividly new kind of poetry, and most of us, when we think of "war poetry" will find the names of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon coming first to our lips, with Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Rupert Brooke ... British poets in our early 21st century do not go to war, as Keith Douglas did and Edward Thomas before him. They might be poet-journalists like James Fenton, the last foreign correspondent to leave Saigon after it fell to the Viet Cong in 1975, or electrifying anti-war performance poets, like the late Adrian Mitchell, or brilliant retellers of Homer's Trojan wars, like Christopher Logue. War, it seems, makes poets of soldiers and not the other way round. Today, as most of us do, poets largely experience war - wherever it rages - through emails or texts from friends or colleagues in war zones, through radio or newsprint or television, through blogs or tweets or interviews. With the official inquiry into Iraq imminent and the war in Afghanistan returning dead teenagers to the streets of Wootton Bassett, I invited a range of my fellow poets to bear witness, each in their own way, to these matters of war. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...arol-ann-duffy War is hell, right? Terrible! People die. BUT, people also LIVE. People also do great things in war. So, my question is...why are the poems of war so bloody depressing and bang on about the futility of war blah blah blah. What about the glory of a kill and the winning of hearts and minds etc etc etc?
There is no glory in war, trust me.. The victors and the vanquished soon become muddled into one.. Peace
There is actually an interesting question here. War is sometimes fought, for various reasons, and particularly during periods of conscription, by sensitive, intelligent, introspective people, and those are the kind of people who write poetry. More often though it is fought by idiots with little or no self-consciousness or introspective capacities (certainly true of a volunteer army - this is why they joined the army). Introspective personality types are more likely to be profoundly affected by the tragedy of what they've seen and been involved in - even where they believed in the cause they were fighting for. Basically, while I'm generalising a bit for the sake of brevity, the kind of person who writes poetry is the kind of person who will be shocked by having to kill (or the idea of it if they haven't experienced it). The kind of person who doesn't have this capacity of thought and instead experiences what matthew terms "the glory of a kill" is more likely to take a picture of said kill on his camera phone and send it to all his mates...
Unless you have experienced, smelled, tasted war in all it's nightmarish horror one has no right to write poetry about it.... Peace
The most famous of all Canadian war poems: by Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields
The Charge of the Light Brigade Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’ Was there a man dismay’d? Not tho’ the soldier knew Someone had blunder’d. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d; Storm’d at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred. Flash’d all their sabres bare, Flash’d as they turn’d in air Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder’d. Plunged in battery smoke Right thro’ the line they broke. Cossack and Russian Reel’d from the sabre-stroke Shatter’d and sunder’d. Then they rode back, but not, Not the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volley’d and thundr’d; Storm’d at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well Came thro’ the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred. When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wonder’d. Honor the charge they made! Honor the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred. Glory or futililty ?? Peace
Tennyson never fought in a war, and wrote that poem after reading an account of the battle in a newspaper...
If you click on the link in the first post, my thread vanished in front of my eyes...with the usual suspects being arse holes. So I moved my thread away, in an attempt to not get into the usual Random Thoughts quagmire. I wanted a Mod' to delete or close this thread if it went the same way. It is ok, never mind, it seems some boys only have large penises in Random Thoughts.
Look at your young men fighting Look at your women crying Look at your young men dying The way they've always done before Look at the hate we're breeding Look at the fear we're feeding Look at the lives we're leading The way we've always done before My hands are tied The billions shift from side to side And the wars go on with brainwashed pride For the love of God and our human rights And all these things are swept aside By bloody hands time can't deny And are washed away by your genocide And history hides the lies of our civil wars D'you wear a black armband When they shot the man Who said "Peace could last forever" And in my first memories They shot Kennedy I went numb when I learned to see So I never fell for Vietnam We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land And I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war Look at the shoes your filling Look at the blood we're spilling Look at the world we're killing The way we've always done before Look in the doubt we've wallowed Look at the leaders we've followed Look at the lies we've swallowed And I don't want to hear no more My hands are tied For all I've seen has changed my mind But still the wars go on as the years go by With no love of God or human rights 'Cause all these dreams are swept aside By bloody hands of the hypnotized Who carry the cross of homicide And history bears the scars of our civil wars "We practice selective annihilation of mayors And government officials For example to create a vacuum Then we fill that vacuum As popular war advances Peace is closer" ** I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh And I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war I don't need one more war I don't need one more war Whaz so civil 'bout war anyway
Buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta: There was a buffalo soldier in the heart of america, Stolen from africa, brought to america, Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival. I mean it, when I analyze the stench - To me it makes a lot of sense: How the dreadlock rasta was the buffalo soldier, And he was taken from africa, brought to america, Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival. Said he was a buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta - Buffalo soldier in the heart of america. If you know your history, Then you would know where you coming from, Then you wouldnt have to ask me, Who the eck do I think I am. Im just a buffalo soldier in the heart of america, Stolen from africa, brought to america, Said he was fighting on arrival, fighting for survival; Said he was a buffalo soldier win the war for america. Dreadie, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy, Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy! Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy, Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy! Buffalo soldier troddin through the land, wo-ho-ooh! Said he wanna ran, then you wanna hand, Troddin through the land, yea-hea, yea-ea. Said he was a buffalo soldier win the war for america; Buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta, Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival; Driven from the mainland to the heart of the caribbean. Singing, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy, Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy! Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy, Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy! Troddin through san juan in the arms of america; Troddin through jamaica, a buffalo soldier# - Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival: Buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta
Never... You could be right. I was going overboard a little though. Overly generalising if you will. I did just mean some people don't see war as a negative experience. It's perhaps a little harder to find...but I do think there are the type of poems I was looking for out there...and you never know, they just might be spelt correctly and have some semblance of grammar.
Did I say post two pop classics here? No. If you are that stupid to know what the thread is about...go and post in the other thread. It likes you better than this thread does. Go shit up the other thread.
Oh I'm sorry. I was under the false impression this is a free speech forum. 'War Poetry' ....I posted two poems, that happen to be about war. Don't like them, don't read them. Your thread will go on regardless. No need to get your knickers wedged so far up your crack you feel the need to be a thread nazi.
So threads titled "what if" are only about "what" and "if"...? If you bothered to read what the thread was about, it was supposed to be about a specific type of war poem. I just quoted where you said you didn't bother to read what the thread was about. If you still don't, there is another thread for you to go shit up. It wouldn't be so bad if we had not already gone through this once before.
