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The Poetry of War
NPR Reviews Poems Inspired by Past Conflicts
Alfred Lord Tennyson
1809-1892
Image: Library of Congress
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Wilfred Owen
1893-1918
Photo: Courtesy Wilfred Owen Estate
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John McCrae
1872-1918
Photo: Courtesy Guelph Museums
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Walt Whitman
1819-1892
Photo: Library of Congress
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882
Image: Library of Congress
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April 2003 -- April is National Poetry Month. In light of events in Iraq, Weekend Edition Sunday commemorates the month with a series of readings of poems inspired by past conflicts. Some may seem to romanticize war; others illuminate the horrors of combat. All are worthy of reflection.
April 27
The Crimean War and World War I
The Crimean War of 1854-1856 was a battle of empires, pitting Russia against Great Britain, France and Ottoman Turkey. On Oct. 25, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava, the British army suffered horrifying losses when, following the wrong orders, a light cavalry brigade consisting of 600 to 700 men charged on Russian forces despite being surrounded on three sides. In Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Britain's poet laureate, captured both the soldiers' courage and the senselessness of the tragedy. Tennyson scholar Linda Hughes reads the poem and recounts the history of the battle.
• Read Alfred Lord Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.
• Listen to an 1890 recording of Tennyson reading his poem, provided by the BBC.
An estimated 42 million people were killed or wounded during World War I. So great was the scale of the devastation that the conflict came to be known as "the war to end all wars." The brutal, senseless nature of the carnage inspired some of the best-known war poems -- In Flanders Fields, by Canadian army physician John McCrae, and Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen, a British soldier. Both McCrae and Owen died while on active duty during the war. Niall Ferguson, author of The Pity of War: Explaining World War I, reads both works, as well as two poems from English poet A.E. Housman.
• Read John McCrae's In Flanders Fields.
• Read Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est.
• Read A.E. Housman's Grenadier.
• Read Housman's Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries.
 Listen to the readings.
April 20
The Civil War
In 1864, Union and Confederate forces were battling for control of the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. Earlier in the war, Union General Philip Sheridan, an aggressive commander, had wrested the region out of the control of Confederate forces. But in October, while Sheridan was away from his troops, Confederate forces launched a surprise attack, driving the Union forces back four miles in what threatened to become a rout. Sheridan came back, reorganized his troops and led them in a counterattack that Princeton University historian James McPherson calls "one of the most spectacular Union victories of the war." Poet Thomas Buchanan Read commemorated the event in Sheridan's Ride; McPherson reads the poem.
• Read Thomas Buchanan Read's Sheridan's Ride.
The Civil War was one of the most brutal conflicts in American history. Perhaps no poet captured the savagery better than Walt Whitman. In his poem The Wound Dresser, Whitman recounts the carnage he witnessed as a volunteer nurse during the war. Later, when President Abraham Lincoln was shot in April 1865 -- just days after the surrender of the Confederate army -- Whitman memorialized the nation's grief in his most famous poem, O Captain! My Captain! David Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, reads both poems.
• Read Walt Whitman's The Wound Dresser.
• Read Whitman's O Captain! My Captain!.
Listen to the readings.
April 13
Paul Revere's Ride
In 1861, during the first days of the Civil War, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a poem that looked back to the American Revolution for inspiration. His poem, Paul Revere's Ride, became an overnight sensation. Historian Jayne Triber, author of A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere, reads the poem and discusses the background of Revere's fabled ride, as well as the historical inaccuracies in Longfellow's work.
• Read Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride.
Listen to the reading.
April 6
Poetry of Ancient Conflicts
Weekend Edition Sunday inaugurates its war poetry series with readings from two ancient works. The first, Lament on the Spirit of War, was written in 2300 B.C. by the earliest known poet, Sumerian priestess Enheduanna. The poem, which opens Women on War: An International Anthology of Writings from Antiquity to the Present, is read by the anthology's editor, Daniela Gioseffi.
• Read Enheduanna's Lament to the Spirit of War.
The second selection is a passage from Homer's Iliad, read by Robert Fagles, professor emeritus of comparative literature at Princeton University and a translator of ancient Greek literature.
• Read a translation of Homer's Illiad, provided by the University of Oregon.
Listen to the readings.
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