Portland Public Library

American war poetry, an anthology, edited by Lorrie Goldensohn

eng

Includes bibliographical references

no index present

non fiction

American war poetry

bibliography

61879831

edited by Lorrie Goldensohn

an anthology

American War Poetry spans the history of the nation. Beginning with the Colonial Wars of the eighteenth-century and ending with the Gulf Wars, this original and significant anthology presents four centuries of American men and women-soldiers, nurses, reporters, and embattled civilians-writing about war. American War Poetry opens with a ballad by a freed African American slave commenting on a skirmish with Indians in a Massachusetts meadow. Poems on the American Revolution follow, as well as poems on "minor" conflicts like the Mexican War and the Spanish-American Wars. This compact anthology has generous selections on the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnamese-American War, but it also includes an unusually large offering on American participation in the Spanish Civil War. Another section covers four hundred years of conflict with Native Americans, ending with poems by contemporary Indians who respond passionately and directly to their difficult history. The collection also reaches into current reaction to American involvement in Latin America, Bosnia, and the Gulf Wars. Showing the depth of feeling and the range of thinking with which Americans have confronted war, American War Poetry expands our sense of what poetry is made to do. While the birth of a national identity is documented in early poems, the anthology also conveys the growing sophistication of a uniquely American style. Although early war poems show that the first justification for war was purely defensive, as American global ambitions matured, American writers moved increasingly to deplore a homegrown imperialism and its terrible costs. While many familiar poems of patriotic ardor have been chosen, other poems show a steady interest in antiwar themesArranged by war, the book begins with the Colonial period and proceeds through Whitman admiring Civil War soldiers crossing a river to end with Brian Turner, who published his first book in 2005, beckoning a bullet in contemporary Iraq

The Colonial Wars, 1746-1763 -- Bars fight / Lucy Terry (Prince) -- The song of Braddock's men / Anonymous -- "Progress of the Colonies. Troubles with the natives" ; "Hostilities between France and England extended to America. Braddock's defeat" / Joel Barlow, from Columbiad, book 5 -- The Revolutionary War, 1776-1783 -- Liberty tree / Thomas Paine -- The American soldier ; Jeffery, or the soldier's progress ; A New York Tory, to his friend in Philadelphia / Philip Freneau -- Burrowing Yankees / Anonymous -- To his excellency General Washington / Phillis Wheatley -- Warren's address to the American soldiers / John Pierpont -- Concord hymn / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Paul Revere's ride / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Black Samson of Brandywine / Paul Laurence DunbarThe War of 1812 -- On the conflagrations at Washington / Philip Freneau -- Defence of Fort McHenry / Francis Scott Key -- The Battle of Niagara, from canto IV / John Neal -- Advice to a raven in Russia / Joel Barlow -- Old Ironsides / Oliver Wendell Holmes -- The Alamo and the Mexican-American War, 1836 and 1846-1848 -- The defense of the Alamo / Joaquin Miller -- The other Alamo / Martín Espada -- Ode, inscribed to W.H. Channing / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- the angels of Buena Vista / John Greenleaf Whittier -- from The Biglow papers / James Russell Lowell -- "When with pale cheek and sunken eye I sang" / Henry David ThoreauThe Civil War, 1861-1865 -- The voice of memory in exile, from a Home in Ashes / William Gilmore Simms -- The arsenal at Springfield / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Barbara Frietchie ; The battle autumn of 1862 / John Greenleaf Whittier -- The march into Virginia, ending in the First Manassas ; Ball's bluff ; A utilitarian view of the Monitor's fight ; Shiloh ; The college colonel / Herman Melville -- The Battle Hymn of the Republic / Julia Ward Howe -- Cavalry crossing a ford ; By the bivouac's fitful flame ; Come up from the fields Father ; A march in the ranks hard-prest, and road unknown ; The wound-dresser ; Reconciliation ; O Captain! My Captain! / Walt Whitman -- The unknown dead / Henry Timrod -- In Louisiana / John William De Forest -- "It feels a shame to be alive" / Emily Dickinson -- Accomplices ; Fredericksburg / Thomas Bailey Aldrich -- The rebel / Innes Randolph -- The gathering of the Grand Army / Charlotte Forten Grimke -- Laughter in the Senate / Sidney Lanier -- The Confederate flags / Ambrose Bierce -- A war memory / Lizette Woodworth Reese -- The unsung heroes / Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Ode to the Confederate dead / Allen Tate -- From Trollope's journal / Elizabeth Bishop -- A Confederate veteran tries to explain the event / Robert Penn Warren -- For the Union dead / Robert Lowell -- Fabrication of ancestors / Alan Dugan -- Hunting Civil War relics at Nimblewill Creek / James Dickey -- The road home / Andrew HudginsThe Indian Wars, 1620-1911 -- The disinterred warrior / William Cullen Bryant -- Metacom / John Greenleaf Whittier -- "Prayer of a warrior" (Assiniboine) ; "Cherokee war-song," version 1 ; "Cherokee war-song," version 2 ; "Song for a fallen warrior (Blackfeet) ; "I will arise with my tomahawk" (Passamaquoddy) ; "Warpath song" ; "Last song of Sitting Bull" (Teton Sioux) / Anonymous -- From far Dakota's cañons / Walt Whitman -- "The taking of life brings serious thoughts" (Pima) ; "War song" (Papago) / Anonymous -- Wildwest / Archibald Macleish -- A centenary ode / James Wright -- Parading with the V.F.W. / Carter Revard -- A tribute to Chief Joseph / Duane Niatum -- The steadying / William Heyen -- I give you back / Joy Harjo -- Coosaponakeesa (Mary Mathews Musgrove Bosomsworth) / Rayna Green -- Three thousand dollar death song / Wendy Rose -- Dear John Wayne ; Captivity / Louise Erdrich -- The Spanish-American War, 1898 -- War is kind ; The battle hymn / Stephen Crane -- The conquerors : the Black troops in Cuba -- The War of the Philippines, 1899-1902 -- On a soldier fallen in the Philippines ; from Ode in a time of hesitation / William Vaughan Moody -- Harry Wilmans / Edgar Lee MastersWorld War I, 1917-1918 -- Patterns / Amy Lowell -- Not to keep / Robert Frost -- Buttons ; Grass / Carl Sandburg -- The death of a soldier / Wallace Stevens -- from Hugh Selwyn Mauberlye, IV, V / Ezra Pound -- There will come soft rains / Sara Teasdale -- Triumphal march : 1931, from Coriolan / T.S. Eliot -- I have a rendezvous with death / Alan Seeger -- Memorial rain / Archibald Macleish -- I sing of Olaf / E.E. Cummings -- To my brother killed : Haumont Wood, October, 1918 / Louise Bogan -- Chateau de soupir, 1917 / Malcolm Cowley -- Champs d'honneur ; Riparto d'assalto / Ernest Hemingway -- Poem out of childhood / Muriel Rukeyser -- The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 -- Sinverguenza / Robinson Jeffers -- Say that we saw Spain die / Edna St. Vincent Millay -- To the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade / Genevieve Taggard -- To Eugene P. Loveman / Alexander Bergman -- City of anguish ; First love / Edwin Rolfe (Fishman) -- Sestina, from Letter to the Front / Muriel Rukeyser -- On the murder of Lieutenant Jose del Castillo / Philip LevineWorld War II, 1941-1945 -- Notes toward a supreme fiction / Wallace Stevens -- Trilogy / H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) -- In distrust of merits / Marianne Moore -- Beaumont to Detroit : 1943 / Langston Hughes -- The fury of aerial bombardment / Richard Eberhart -- Snatch ; DP's / Lincoln Kirstein -- Survival : infantry ; Of being numerous, 14, 18, 19, 20 / George Oppen -- Troop train / Karl Shapiro -- Losses ; Prisoners ; The death of the ball turret gunner ; Protocols ; The truth / Randall Jarrell -- Elegy just in case ; A box comes home / John Ciardi -- Remembering that island / Thomas McGrath -- Negro hero / Gwendolyn Brooks -- Memories of West Street and Lepke / Robert Lowell -- Grand Central with soldiers, early morning ; A fable of the war ; IFF ; Redeployment / Howard Nemerov -- After twenty years / Eleanor Ross Taylor -- First snow in Alsace / Richard Wilbur -- The firebombing / James Dickey -- The faithful / Jane Cooper -- Still life / Anthony Hecht -- Portrait from the infantry / Alan Dugan -- The pit / Lucien Stryk -- Carentan o Carentan ; Memories of a lost war ; The battle / Louis Simpson -- The Dachau shoe / W.S. Merwin -- Dos oysleydikn (The emptying) / Jerome Rothenberg -- Legends from camp, VI, X, XV / Lawson Fusao Inada -- Prodigy / Charles Simic -- The lost pilot / James Tate -- Aubade of the singer and saboteur, Marie Triste : 1941 / Norman Dubie -- Welcome to Hiroshima / Mary Jo Salter -- Hiroshima maiden ; Heart Mountain, 1943 / Lee Ann Roripaugh -- The minefield / Diane ThielThe Korean War, 1950-1953 -- Ode for the American dead in Asia / Thomas McGrath -- A Korean woman seated by a wall / William Meredith -- On a certain engagement south of Seoul / Hayden Carruth -- The circle ; Waterfront bars ; Memory of a victory / Keith Wilson -- The said ; Flag memoir / Reg Saner -- Trying to remember people I never really knew / William Childress -- The January-May 1951 slaughter ; Jacob Mosqueda wrestles with the angels / Rolando Hinojosa -- Under flag / Myung Mi Kim -- The chasm ; Fragments of the forgotten war / Suji Kwock KimiThe Vietnam War, 1964-1975 -- The march 1 ; The march 2 / Robert Lowell -- On being asked to write a poem against the war in Vietnam / Hayden Carruth -- On hearing a new escalation / Richard Hugo -- Weeping woman ; At the Justice Department / Denise Levertov -- Peace with honor / Philip Appleman -- Counting small-boned bodies / Robert Bly -- Iron horse / Allen Ginsberg -- The Asians dying / W.S. Merwin -- Of late / George Starbuck -- Hauling over Wolf Creek Pass in winter / Walter McDonald -- Dead weight / Jim Nye -- Work ; Haircut ; Vermont / David Huddle -- May 1968 / Sharon Olds -- Infantry assault ; Papasan ; Purification / Doug Anderson -- Thoughts before dawn ; April 30, 1975 / John Balaban -- OK Corral East / Horace Coleman -- Basket case ; It is monsoon at last / Basil Paquet -- Peace, so that / Greg Kuzma -- Black winter / Frank Stewart -- Choppers / Dale Ritterbusch -- The hooded legion / Gerald McCarthy -- Starlight scope myopia ; Tu Do Street ; Dui doi, dust of life ; Facing it / Yusef Komunyakaa -- When I am 19 I was a medic / D.F. Brown -- The little man / David Connolly -- Beautiful wreckage ; How it all comes back ; Finding my old battalion command post / W.D. Ehrhart -- What saves us ; Burning shit an An Khe ; The last lie / Bruce Weigl -- Wa ta se Na ka mo ni, Vietnam Memorial / Ray A. Young Bear -- The women next door / Barbara Tran -- Mother's pearls / Bao-Long ChuEl Salvador, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf -- The colonel / Carolyn Forché -- The day they cleaned up the border : El Salvador, February 1981 / Wendy Rose -- Bosnia tune / Joseph Brodsky -- Bogomil in Languedoc / John Mathias -- A thousand cranes / Dale Ritterbusch -- "It was an open-air market: / Adrian Oktenberg -- Night vision of the Gulf War / Dale Jacobson -- Mondrian's Forest / Wendy Battin -- The ribbon the Hell's Tree, X / Kristi Garboushian -- Jihad / J.D. McClatchy -- When the Towers fell / Galway Kinnell -- The school among the ruins / Adrienne Rich -- The kind of shadow that calls out fate / Tony Hoagland -- Shrapnel / C.K. Williams -- Found in the Free Library / Eleanor Wilner -- Here, bullet / Brian Turner