War Poetry: Still Alive, And Not Just From Dead Poets

Read this great article on war poetry. I found this statement in the middle of it quite revealing:

True, Brian Turner, the American soldier with the creative writing MA, published a volume of war poetry that goes far beyond the hobbyist poetry that most people write at some time in their lives, especially to express sadness or loss, but he is the exception who proves the rule.

Yes, I’ve heard Brian Turner read. And it isn’t every day that you hear of a military man holding a degree like an MFA, or MA in creative writing. The two are generally considered polar opposites. I know.

You see, I spent 2005 in Iraq. I wrote some poems while I was there. I’ve had a few of them published and still working on others. I’ve spent a good deal of my time since being home revising my poems. While I don’t hold a masters degree of any kind, I have had literary inclinations all of my life. I don’t consider myself a war poet, though I’m sure that once word gets out that others probably will. I’ve always just considered myself interested in producing poems of literary merit. Whether I do or not will have to be left up to the judgments of others.

War poetry … how do you define it? Is it defined by those who write it, or is it defined by the era in which one lives? Certainly, most of us have no problem referring to “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Lord Tennyson as a war poem, but is Tennyson a “war poet?” He did, after all, write poems about subjects other than war. He is typically referred to as representative of the Victorian age of poetics. Indeed, that is well deserved.

Other poets are more easily defined. Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, for instance. Walt Whitman, the father of American poetry, wrote during the Civil War, but we don’t call him a war poet. Others, like Audie Murphy, wrote poetry, but we think of them more as warriors than poets. What is it that sets our reputations in stone? Is it what we do or believe, what we write, or how we live?

These are questions that do not have easy answers. But I am glad that someone other than myself is concerned with them. I’m glad that someone is asking the questions. And I’m glad that we have war poets even if it is a sad day that we have war.

And now, ladies and gentleman, Brian Turner:

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