What are some good military poems?
Two of my favorite poems are military poems. One is by Wilfred Owen, and I will include the text below. The other is by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., and I will include the text of that one as well. Both were written by men who saw combat; Owen served in WWI, and Magee in WWII. They both contain startling images; Owen’s are horrific, and Magee’s are beautiful. There is a vast body of poetry written by men in combat. There are other military poems, as well, but for me, the ones written by men who actually fought, and often died, in service have special meaning. I am especially fond of WWI poetry. There were a lot of well-educated young Englishmen who served in that war as officers. They went into the war thinking that war was about glory and noble sacrifice, and came out the other end, if they survived, with a completely different tale to tell. Because of their educational background, they often had the tools to put their experiences down on paper, and on the whole, what emerges is a stron
You’ll probably have to google around until you find sites, and even then you’ll probably only find them from the early 20th century and earlier. Plenty of good books, though. I second the mention of the World War I poets, particularly Wilfred Owen. There’s a good collection of their work entitled “Up the Line to Death: The War Poets, 1914-1918”, edited by Brian Gardner–highly recommended. The American Poets Project has a collection of World War II poems; the link is below, and there are excerpts at that site as well as a list of all the titles–many of which you may be able to find in other collections. (I don’t know if it’s in there, but one that always comes to mind is “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed…) The second link is to a list of collections of Vietnam War poetry–again, you may not find the actual poems online, but the books are out there. Finally, there’s a very recent collection of poems by Brian Turner, an infantry sergeant who fought in Iraq, called “Here, Bullet”. The t
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