Poets Against the War

Military Review, March-April, 2005 by Jeffrey C. Alfier

POETS AGAINST THE WAR, Sam Hamill and Sally Anderson, eds., Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, New York, 2003, 263 pages, $12.95.

You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.--Leon Trotsky

After enjoying Sam Hamill's excellent introduction to this volume of protest poetry, my impression was that many contributors wrote simply out of an urgent need to say something--anything. What emerges reads like rough drafts rather than final cuts, which is disappointing considering the outstanding lineup of poets Hamill assembled.

Often poetry arising from national or international exigencies is written too quickly. Antiwar movements deserve articulation but should not produce a literature of rambling and inartistic polemics about the self-evident undergirded by languid endings and unimaginative titles. Poets need the tempering discipline of imagistic or symbolist and rhythmic or stylistic austerity. Too much is obvious in these poems, and the more obvious or universal a particular subject is, such as war, the more effort must be put into the artistry of the telling.

Compare, for instance, Poets Against the War to the protest poetry of John Bradley's Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1995) or W.D. Ehrhart's Carrying the Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Texas Tech University Press, Lubbock, TX, 1989). Ironically, Todd Swift's, 100 Poets Against the War (Salt Publishing, United Kingdom, 2003)--forerunner of Poets Against the War--contains much more substantive and memorable verse.

Still, all is not lost. Hamill's book does contain some worthy poetry. Salam al-Asadi's "The Clay's Memory" is a magnificently powerful witness to war, while Eric Pankey's "History," Marvin Bell's "A Lesson from the Corps," Lucille Clifton's "Stones and Bones," and Holly Thomas's "Chiapas" are other excellent poems. Several poems, such as Jim Pearson's "Kunishi Ridge 2d Bn. First Marines" and John Balaban's "Collateral Damage" transcend the war in Iraq.

MAJ Jeffrey C. Airier, USAF, Ramstein AB, Germany