Dolce et Decorum Est: An Examination of the Physical and Poetic Landscape of War Poetry from World War I to The War on Terror

I've been reading a lot of war poetry lately -- well, I guess it's more accurate to say I've been getting ready to read a lot of war poetry lately. In my graduate poetry class, we're discussing poetry of witness or poetry of trauma. This is an interesting course, and we've read some pretty outstanding texts thus far. One of the texts, Bomber County by Daniel Swift, brought up something that has been making me think about modern war poetry as well as poetry in general.

In Bomber County, Swift repeatedly mentions that many poets and critics -- these people range from Dylan Thomas to Wilfred Owen -- claimed that there was no place in World War II for poets. At first, I was skeptical, and I thought that they were just blinded by their proximity to trauma; however, as Swift claims in the first chapter -- the chapter I focused on -- World War II differed greatly from World War I. This, of course, seems like an obvious thing to say, but the truth of the matter is a bit more complicated than one might initially think.

Swift goes into great detail about the differences in landscape, both physical and poetic, between both World Wars. The methodology behind the systematization of battle tactics dictated the ways in which soldiers fought, but these differences also extended past the battlefield. In the Great War, trench warfare was the main mode of combat. This horrendous strategy spawned infamous literary gems we all know. Dolce et Decorum Est might be the most famous poem inspired by the atrocities of World War I. Poetry aside, we all know about the glamour and valor of dying in the mud on the Western Front -- an action which is said to be truly brave and beautiful. The Western Front, it seems, essentially created the poetry of World War I.

There was nothing like this in World War II, though. Trench warfare was usurped by bombings and U-Boat battles. The Luftwaffe was expelling thousands of pounds of bombs onto London daily. Airmen fought, killed, and died over foreign territory, and their bodies littered the middle European countryside. The landscape changed.

Technology, to a large extent, changed the makeup of warfare, and, thus, changed everything about the way nations approached winning the wars. The battlefield was no longer like the one from World War II. Civilians became more and more involved in the war – people were indirectly slaughtered as a result of night after night after night of carpet bombing over the city of London. This, in effect, changed the way that humans – not just soldiers; not just civilians – perceived war. This change in perception changed the way that people approached writing poetry about war.

This is interesting, in that World War II’s physical landscape – a landscape that included ground forces, air forces, and civilians – dragged new people into the poetic conversation. Prior to World War II, the war poetry produced in Britain was derivative of mainly soldiers; however, when civilians were introduced, first-hand, to the reality of war, civilians were given license, so to speak, to talk about war in meaningful and poetic ways.

Before I delve too deeply into that time period, though, I need to stop before passing the point of no return; so, to make my point clear, I’ll say what I want to say: as the physical landscape of war changes, the poetic landscape of the people involved changes as well. Different players come into the picture, and, thus, create different forms of poetry as a result of different experiences of war. This, however, is rather problematic when looked at in a modern context.

War, largely, is something that the common American knows nothing about. Sure, someone may know someone or have someone in their family who is involved in the military; however, the average American is disconnected from the reality of war. Nations can be annihilated at the push of a button, and military leaders and dictators – people who might have been, at one point, considered untouchable – can be killed by drone planes powered by impossibly complex technology.

So, what is there to say about war poetry in a modern context? Do any of us have a good enough understanding of war to write about it in a meaningful manner? Perhaps we cannot write about war directly. Maybe we instead have to focus in on the disconnect from war, and thereby explore the themes that are inherent in this disconnection. What are your thoughts on the subject matter? Will there be any Wilfred Owens of the infamous “War on Terror?” Let me know what you think.

J