Relationship between Poetry and War - Essay Example

Resisting War Through Poetry Since the 1900s all wars engaging the US military have been fought at a remote location. Even so, wars involving the US military have always had a profound impact on Americans at home. Soldiers return home wounded or dead and in the meantime, loved ones suffer through the economic and emotional turmoil awaiting the uncertain return of soldiers (Metres, 2007). Poetry has proven to be an especially valuable technique for articulating the various experiences of soldiers and those at home and in doing so have made compelling anti-war arguments. US poets have tapped into the American conscience and have examined the utility of war against the backdrop of the experiences of American soldiers abroad and Americans at home in times of war (Goldensohn, 2006). Poets are generally expected to be contemplative and to give expression to reality. Poets not only “interpret the world, but inform and renew it” (Clements, 1990, p. 239). In this regard, American poets through poetic expression have contemplated, interpreted, informed and renewed the war expression, rationalizing for the most part their objection to war. Some of these poets were actually “conscientious objectors” (Metres, 2007, p. 5). Robert Lowell was a conscientious objector and is the main subject in his poem Memories of West Street and Lepke which reflects upon his experiences when he was imprisoned for a few days in West Street Jail awaiting a sentence for his refusal to be drafted for the Second World War (Metres, 2000). During his stint in Jail, Lowell met Czar Lepke, a leader of a gang known as Murder Incorporated, who had been sentenced to death for murder. Lepke allegedly told Lowell that he was in jail for killing a human being and asked Lowell what he was in jail for to which Lowell replied “Oh, I’m in for refusing to kill” (Metres, 2000, p. 661). Lowell’s Memories of West Street and Lepke does not recount this specific encounter, but it presents a realistic image of American freedom and by doing so, forces the reader to ponder whether or not that freedom is worth going to war to protect. Lowell himself is living in a huge house and has only one child, a nine month old baby girl. Meanwhile, a man is “scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans” and “has two children” (Lowell, Lines 6-7). Thus Lowell’s consciously brings attention to the fact that freedom brings about inequities. Moreover, Lowell mentions his young daughter which brings to mind the fact that at this very young age, she might never know her father had he accepted the draft instead of jail time. Lowell points out that his daughter is: ...young enough to be my granddaughter, like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infant’s wear (Lowell, Lines 10-11). Lowell draws attention to the innocent child who is full of hope and promise for the future. At the same time, the innocent child is fully unaware of the reality outside of her sheltered life. For now, life is bright and compared to the sun. In the meantime, her father’s lived experiences inform that his daughter’s hope and promise is only temporary. Lowell pointedly shares the limits of freedom and how those limits to freedom ensure that all American are finally treated equally. For in Memories of West Street and Lepke explains how he ends up at the West Street Jail and how exercising freedom of expression has placed him in prison among those who have committed serious crimes: These are the tranquilized Fifties, and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime? I was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O., and made my manic statement, telling off the state and president, and then sat waiting sentence in the bull pen beside a negro boy with curlicues of marijuana in his hair (Lowell, 2nd Stanza). Lowell’s refusal to go to war has cast him among the society’s rejects or marginalized. He is not only sitting next to a reject or the marginalized, but he is sitting in sight of Czar Lepke who has things in his possession that other prisoners are denied. Having shared the experiences and observations with the reader, the reader cannot help but wonder whether or not the freedom that brings about this kind of social injustice in America is worth going to war to defend. Lowell published a series of anti-war poems in Land of Unlikeness (Metres, 2007). One notable anti-war poem is Cistercians in Germany in which he draws attention to futility of going to war for the US (Metres, 2007). Lowell writes: ...now the dragon’s Litter buckles on steel-scales and puffs Derision like confetti from ten thousand Scrap-heaps, munition pools and bee-hive camps; “Pleasant and gracious it is to die for America” (Lowell cited in Metres, 2007, p. 32). According to Metres (2007) the word dragon is a metaphor for the US and the stanza links war to American capitalism. The US as a dragon has stockpiled weapons of war and hordes its citizens into “bee hive camps” (Metres, 2007, p. 32). Again the question Lowell puts out there for his audience is whether or not this is the kind of country worth sacrificing life and limb for. Lowell expresses his anti-war sentiment in general in Christmas Eve Under Hooker’s Statue. Rather than express the futility of dying for America, Lowell represents war as a manifestation of evil among mankind. Lowell writes: Tonight a blackout. Twenty years ago I hung my stocking on the tree, and hell’s Serpent entwined the apple in the toe To sting the child with knowledge. Hooker’s heels Kicking at nothing in the shifting snow, A cannon and a cairn of cannonballs Rusting before the blackened statehouse, know How the long horn of plenty broke like glass In Hooker’s guantllets (Lowell cited in Bell, 1983, p. 21). The blackout speaks to the Second World War and despite the fact that the war was fought at a remote location, it was profoundly felt in the US interrupting Christmas Eve. It can also be argued that Lowell consciously paralleled war with the ritual of Christmas so as to represent war as a ritual or a recurring theme in man’s relationship with one another. The parallel is also arguably intended to demonstrate the personal effects of the distant war on the home front. The poem Christmas Eve Under Hooker’s Statue does not speak only to World War II, but instead speaks to war’s disruptive nature on the home front generally. For instance, references to Hooker’s statue conjure up images of “another war at another point in time” (Bell, 1983, p. 21). References to the “blackened Statehouse” brings the reader back to the Second World War as it refers to the deliberate blackening exercise conducted during the Second World War as an air raid drill. According to Bell (1983), the “image of the horn of plenty” is a “prototype of the Christmas stocking” and “disperses particulars again and universalizes the image of Hooker” who is decidedly the “man of war in all times as despoiler of man’s good” (Bell, 1983, p. 22). Christmas represents innocence and the interruption on Christmas eves represents war as a symptom of man’s greed and the destruction of innocence. This message is consciously conveyed through references to the serpent that “stings the child with knowledge”. Thus war is evil and it is just as destructive at home as it is abroad. Conscientious objector poem William Stafford draws attention to the cold nature of far in terms of killing in his post war poem Traveling Through the Dark. The first stanza reveals the narrator coming across a dead deer on a narrow road. The narrator stops his car and stands above the dead doe and described her cold stiff body. Upon dragging the corpse away, the narrator realizes that the doe is pregnant. The narrator recalls: My fingers touching her side brought me the reason – Her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, Alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitate (Stafford, 3rd Stanza). The narrator then shares that he “thought hard for all of us” (Stafford, 5th Stanza). According to Nelson (2012) while Traveling Through the Dark, does not speak directly to war, it questions the ethical nature of killing in war. The pregnant doe’s killing was cold and ruthless and she was left on the road undignified in death with a surviving foetus that was sure to die without the mother’s support. The doe’s ruthless and undignified killing and the collateral damages manifested by the surviving dependent is a metaphor for the ruthless and undignified killing in war and its collateral damages to those who are not directly involved in the war effort. Stafford’s post-war poem Peace Walk speaks to the helplessness of those who are not directly in the war but realizes that war is wrong. In the Peace Walk protestors feel compelled to speak out against the Cold War, but are uncertain whether or not they should as they are convinced it would not change things. Nevertheless they go out into the hot son with posters bearing the words “Thou Shalt Not Kill” a poignant reminder of God’s law and man’s disobedience (Stafford, 1977). The protestors observe the oblivion of onlookers who simply stare and register either disapproval or disinterest. Meanwhile: Occur, slow the other fallout, unseen On islands everywhere – fallout, falling Unheard. We held our poster up to shade our eyes (Stafford, 1977, 5th Stanza). In other words, while the protesters take a stand against the stockpiling of nuclear arms and onlookers go about their daily lives, nuclear tests are taking place on remote islands. The protesters finally come to the conclusion that they cannot resist the war effort effectively if they cannot even convince bystanders of their cause. The poem ends with this realization as follows: At the end we just walked away; No one was there to tell us where to leave the signs (Stafford, 1977, 6th Stanza). According to Nelson (2012), the signs referred to Peace Walk were not merely the posters held by the protesters. They referred to the signs or signals that mankind gives by virtue of how they conduct their daily lives. They are the signs that man gives to the world and the signs that the world gives to mankind (Nelson, 2012). The Vietnam War was particularly influential in providing American poets with the opportunity to give expression to personal and national anti-war sentiments (Metres, 2007). The experience of soldiers is captured by Peace is Our Profession written by the GIs of the 1st Air Infantry Division (Nelson, 2012/1981). The poem declares: We shoot the sick, the young, the lame, We do our best to kill and main, Because the kills count all the same Napalm sticks to kids (GI’s of the 1st Air Infantry Division, 1981, cited in Nelson, 2012, p. 345). Peace is Our Profession draws attention to the particularly cold and cruel nature of the Vietnamese War. The Pentagon did not distinguish between the deaths and merely counted each killing as a conquest. The soldier, fully aware of this moral dilemma, completed detached from society continues to take victims and add to the casualty count regardless of what his or her conscience is telling him. More importantly, there is an element of agency in the killing. The soldier is simply acting as the government’s agent in these merciless and senseless killings and quite possibly destroying the lives of the soldiers whose conscience are informing them of the immorality and senselessness of the killing. Still there are accounts of soldiers who are emotionally engaged and have profound regrets about the killing. The mental strains of war therefore inform that even where soldiers manage to survive, they return home quite often irreparably harmed. Vietnam veteran Yusef Komunyakaa’s (1988) poem We Never Know tells of a heart breaking experience in the killing of an enemy: He danced with tall grass For a moment, like he was swaying With a woman. Our gun barrels Glowed white-hot. When I got to him, A blue halo Of flies had already claimed him. I pulled the crumbled photograph From his fingers. There’s no other way To say this: I fell in love. The morning cleared again, Except for a distant mortar & somewhere chopper taking off. I slid the wallet into his pocket & turned him over, so he wouldn’t be Kissing the ground (Komunyakaa, cited in Nelson, 2012, pp. 345-346). Komunyakaa therefore humanizes the soldier who commits the killing as well as the victim. Yet, it cannot be lost on the reader that it is precisely because these are human beings with human emotions killing strangers for the sake of war that soldiers cannot help but become dehumanized by these experiences. Thus the emotional damages attached to war are inescapable and soldiers who left home, healthy human beings will invariably be returned permanently damaged if they manage to escape alive. The American anti-war poets appeal to the conscience of mankind by drawing attention to the political nature of war and the extent to which mankind is used in war for these political aims under the rhetoric of freedom fighting. The manipulation of Americans for the sake of war comes at a high price. Soldiers suffer irreparable harm and those who remain at home bear the burden of the loss of the lives of soldiers or the inevitable return of a soldier who is either physically or mentally harmed or both. In the meantime, Americans remain at home, waiting, grieving and suffering. Those who dare to challenge the war effort by refusing to be drafted are imprisoned for exercising free choice. Thus the damages of war are widespread and American poets give artful expression to the harm caused by war and by doing so use language and imagery to resist war. Works Cited Bell, V. M. Robert Lowell, Nihilist as Hero. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Clements, A. L. Poetry of Contemplation: John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and the Modern Period. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990. Goldensohn, L. American War Poetry: An Anthology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006. Lowell, R. “Memories of West Street and Lepke.” Robert Lowell & Co. (n.d.). http://robertlowellandco.blogspot.com/2009/05/like-arrr-this-poems-about-like-jail.html (Retrieved April 25, 2012). Metres, P. Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2007. Metres, P. “Confusing a Naïve Robert Lowell and Lowell Naeve: ‘Lost Connections’ In 1940s War Resistance at West Street Jail and Danbury Prison.” Contemporary Literature, Winter 2000, Vol. 41(4): 661-692. Nelson, C. The Oxford Handbook of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012. Stafford, W. E. “Traveling Through the Dark.” Poetry Foundation (n.d.). http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171495 (Retrieved April 25, 2012). Stafford, W.E. “Peace Walk.” Poetry Foundation. (1977). http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240098 (Retrieved April 25, 2012). Read More