As long as humans continue to fight in wars, there will be people who oppose wars. War poses a moral dilemma that often leaves people reeling. Opposition to the death, destruction, and catastrophe that characterizes many conflicts finds itself in songs, journalism, and poetry. Writers vent their frustrations on paper to cope with things they cannot fix or to cope with irreparable losses. Many anti-war poets question why wars are fought and to whose benefit battles take place.
Throughout these wars, America saw almost combat on its shores, but as life went on in American cities, the reality of what these wars had done hung heavy around so many people. The longer the war lasted, the more discontent and anger people became as they questioned the use of government weapons in these interactions. When World War 2 ended in 1945, the American army had only seen active combat for 4 years, so the anti-war poems that arose questioned the violence occurring in the Pacific Theatre and the idea of right and wrong when it comes to war. In contrast, the Vietnam War raged for nearly 20 years without a clear victory. Poets questioned why troops were still being sent overseas to fight a battle that seemed impossible to win. Many anti-war poets of the Vietnam War focused on the moral dilemma of war while also expanding on the discontent that people had concerning the war.
Some people choose to express their discontent for war and conflict in a number of ways. Some marched through major cities; others published discourses on the moral question of war, while others focused on writing poem to come to terms with their discontent, but these poems were vastly different despite only possessing a 20 year age gap. This project hopes to look at the contrasting appearance of Anti-war poetry following two of the significant moment in American wartime history.
Maggie,
This is a very interesting take on contemporary anti-war poetry. My favorite aspect of your proposal is that you want to compare some of the earliest contemporary anti-war poems to contemporary anti-war poems from a later date. The label “contemporary poetry” is so broad, and, as we have highlighted briefly in class, it is approaching a point in which people are questioning when to end the era of contemporary poetry and move into a new era. So, I am excited for you to explore poems of the same era while focusing on a time disparity.
I also appreciate your acknowledgment of using poetry as a coping mechanism. This is certainly a commonality among the two sets of poems, but the language used and tone used showing differing patterns of how people were coping during the two time periods. Thank you for sharing!