Customer Reviews

American War Poetry: An Anthology

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This is a very well done and well organized anthology of war poetry by American authors. The poems presented here come from a number of sources; those who actually participated in war and those how did not. Some of the works are highly patriotic, others bring the reader face to face with the reality of war as seen through the eyes of the men who were actually there. A few of the poems could be classified as strictly propaganda while others have no particular agenda what so ever, other than to tell a story, express emotions and always, one way or another, to inform.

The editor, Lorrie Goldensohn has arraigned this work in chronological order, beginning with the "Indian Wars." and the first work is "Bars Fight," which addressed a poem based on a battle fought in 1746. We have a sampling of poems form the Colonial Wars, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, The Mexican-American War , Civil War, Indian Wars, (Note here that represent the Native American point of view are well represented in this work), Spanish-American War, War of the Philippines, World War I, The Spanish Civil War (Yes, we had quite a number of American involved in that one too), World War II, Vietnam War, El Salvador, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf.

History through the eyes of the poet, no doubt...what better way to learn?

Some of the authors and their works are known; well known, while other are from such individuals as "Anonymous." Over half of the poets are what you would call "unknown," or just soldiers and sailors who found themselves caught up in the madness of war. We have work from such diverse poets as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Robert Bly, Thoreau, Hemingway, Elizabeth Bishop and many, many other well known writers. All of the works chosen here though are striking in their emotional appeal; if "appeal" is the correct word.

Ms. Goldensohn has given us a very nice short biography of each of the writers (when known) and introduced each section with a short history of the war involved.

The technical quality of the works chosen varies, as it should, from great on down. That aspect of these works is up to the reader's individual taste. Whether or not the pieces is technically "correct" or not is rather moot though in this case as that is not the reason for the selection of these poems.

This is one of the better anthologies of war poetry I have run across...and there are many. I say this primarily because so much ground is covered and the way the editor has arraigned these works gives the reader a very good overview of our wars, changes in our outlook and attitude. Most importantly though, she has picked works that truly give us a looked into the deepest and darkest part of many, many men. Many of these works are absolutely haunting.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

A topical and very good anthology of poems by American writers about war. The editor has striven for a balance of covering all significant American wars, significant American poets, and representative works, even in cases where the quality is not great. The selection is very good with a lot of fine and some outstanding poets. Included are some famous and some obscure works. Most interesting is the marked increase in the number of quality poems that comes with the 20th century. There are certainly some great 19th century war poems, notably the work of Whitman, but much of what is presented from the 19th century is second rate though of considerable historic interest. The 20th century, however, sees the work of many fine American poets.

There are many good ways to try to understand humanity's dark impulse to slaughter each other in war. When I was thirteen my grandmother took me to Washington, DC in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. I still remember the sights and sounds of protest. Later I visited the War Memorial commemorating that war and watched as visitors groped along the wall to identify the name of a loved one. In 1995 our family stood on the streets of downtown Moscow while a military parade celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II (which claimed the lives of some 50 million Russians). Our family has also appreciated the oral history provided by my wife's stepfather who fought with the "greatest generation." I have also benefited from reading histories written by experts long after a war ended, those written while battles still raged (cf. Iraq), and autobiographical accounts written by soldiers (Jarhead). Everyone, in my opinion, should read Chris Hedges's masterpiece War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Thanks to Lorrie Goldensohn, we can now try to understand war through poetry. About half of the 232 poems in this book were written by war participants. She has arranged the poems in chronological order by the poet's date of birth, grouping them according to specific wars (Colonial Wars, Revolutionary Wars, War of 1812, etc.). The poems begin with skirmishes with Indians in 1746 and end with insurgents in Iraq. Each section begins with a brief description of the war and its social context. Brief biographies of the poets (pp. 367-404) humanize them even more. These war poems written across nearly 300 years explore almost every human emotion you might imagine--pride and patriotism, propaganda and protest, victory and defeat, bravery and fear, death and mutilation, glorious triumphs and depressing futility, so-called "good" wars like World War II and "bad" wars like Vietnam. Contrary to the misconception that poetry is unrelated to "real" life, Goldensohn documents the efforts of poets interacting with the greatest of human tragedies.