Aknauta
03-04-2003, 10:27 PM
techcentralstation.c om
War of Words
By Edward J. Renehan Jr. 03/04/2003
WICKFORD, RI. — Today's headlines are full of stories about poets who rail against war with Iraq. An organization called Poets Against the War claims to have gathered poems and statements from some 12,000 American "writers," known and unknown, mostly the latter. Poets Against the War plans to take this immense ball of verse — the good and the bad, the profound and the inane, all jumbled together — and hurl it in the direction of Congress on Wednesday, March 5th. They have also declared the 5th an International Day of Poetry Against the War.
The mood was quite different some 89 years ago, when poets (and writers generally) deployed their pens in support of the Allied military effort during World War I.
The British poet and editor Edmund Gosse composed an essay entitled "War and Literature" just as fighting commenced in the summer of 1914. Gosse used his piece to applaud the oncoming battle, which he saw as offering an antidote to British materialism. Gosse viewed war as an opportunity to dedicate one's self and one's country to a grand ideal, and thus to escape the trivial, self-centered, and ultimately meaningless ritual of mere money-getting.
iambic pentameter this way (http://www.techcentralstati on.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?P ID=1051-350&CID=1051-030403C)
War of Words
By Edward J. Renehan Jr. 03/04/2003
WICKFORD, RI. — Today's headlines are full of stories about poets who rail against war with Iraq. An organization called Poets Against the War claims to have gathered poems and statements from some 12,000 American "writers," known and unknown, mostly the latter. Poets Against the War plans to take this immense ball of verse — the good and the bad, the profound and the inane, all jumbled together — and hurl it in the direction of Congress on Wednesday, March 5th. They have also declared the 5th an International Day of Poetry Against the War.
The mood was quite different some 89 years ago, when poets (and writers generally) deployed their pens in support of the Allied military effort during World War I.
The British poet and editor Edmund Gosse composed an essay entitled "War and Literature" just as fighting commenced in the summer of 1914. Gosse used his piece to applaud the oncoming battle, which he saw as offering an antidote to British materialism. Gosse viewed war as an opportunity to dedicate one's self and one's country to a grand ideal, and thus to escape the trivial, self-centered, and ultimately meaningless ritual of mere money-getting.
iambic pentameter this way (http://www.techcentralstati on.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?P ID=1051-350&CID=1051-030403C)