During WWI most poets of war broke down their feelings with regard to a patriotic obligation type feeling that rises from illusions of freedom, wants for justice and safety, and/or just animalistic territorial pride for one's place of residence. There was still a looming of Victorian proper protocol and procedure lingering in the air of those in and affected by the war which lent its idealistic romanticized thought processes to those lying on the ground staring up at the stars from battlegrounds, Red Cross stations, and USO benefits everywhere. Poet’s minds were dripping with what was waiting back home and the questions that follow of the realization that death stares at them from every shadow just to cap the thought process with why would a God so mighty allow a man to endure such pain. In A Treasury of War Poetry British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 of The Riverside Literature Series, we are introduced to Henry van Dyke early on as he proclaims in rhythmic up-lift in his poem “Liberty Enlightening The World” “O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire,/ Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom’s altar-fire/ For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the warlords cease,/And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace.” (Kindle Location 225) These are men who are not used to hand grenades and scarce rations as they are men who before the war, ran the local grocer or counted out your money at the bank, or better yet just walked out of high school doors. So when they would “…lain/In muddy trenches, napping like a beast/ With one eye open, under sun and rain/ And that unceasing hell-fire…/ It was strange” (Kindle location, 1830) as Wilfred Wilson Gibson said in “Between The Lines”. Though most of the poets of this war seemed to keep a hope about them that resonated through their words such as in A. Victor Ratcliff’s “Optimism” where he states “O day, be long and heavy if you will,/ But on our hopes set not a bitter heel./ For tiny hopes like tiny flowers of Spring/Will come” (Kindle Location, 1618). The war was hard on these boys and men but they fought with the, some would say, optimism that comes with thinking they are fighting an ending battle. They didn’t think another war was right around the corner.
When along came WWII quite an animosity had built inside the soldiers whose minds fill the pages of Poets of World War II by Harvey Shapiro. These were new soldiers who have not seen war but heard all about it from their parents and/or siblings mixing with returning soldiers who fought not too long ago. All of them collectively knowing of the travesties testing man’s will to live during the First World War. What returning soldiers first saw as nobility to fight for one's country now is a crouching of one's personal space where they no longer feel they understand what it is they are fighting for exactly because the whole of it all is so large that they cannot wrap their minds around what all is going on. During the military downtime, the roaring twenties "kicked its heals up" in the face of the prim and proper Victorian regimented lifestyle and people got lost in F. Scotts Fitzgerald’s huge party of flighty feminine indecision (stay with old Victorian security and money or dive into ex-patriot uncertainty and lavishly lush extremes) and overly mothered men who indulged these women. So when WWII reared its face at these industrial revolutionaries, existential thinkers, and philosophical literary minds it was like dad just pulled the entire breaker box, not just the switch, on the rebel party people still had going on inside their heads. “The war that we have carefully for years provoked/ Catches us unprepared, amazed and indignant. Our…/…leaders make orations. This is the people/ That hopes to impose on the whole planetary world/ An American peace.” (Shapiro, 13) Robinson Jeffers seemed to be a little cynically truthful in his assessment in his poem titled “Pearl Harbor” where he states “But now I am old…”
It was the old and the young, toe to toe and back to back swapping un-relatable stories that defined what Lincoln Kirstein put so bluntly in his poem titled “Rank” where he said “Differences between rich and poor, king and queen,/ Cat and dog, hot and cold, day and night, now and then,/ Are less clearly distinct than all those between/ Officers and us: enlisted men.” (Shapiro, 52) Where he not only defined the difference but defined the mood with his use of capital letters and profanity in his poem titled “P.O.E” where he clearly packs up the hope WWI poets tried to maintain as he states “We strive to fake a grateful note/ But goddamn duffle bag and pack,/ Gas mask, rifle, helmet, coat/ Too heavy are, so each sad sack, Must flop and gripe: This is some shit./ Up On Your Feet, our orders crack./ It’s All Aboard for THIS IS IT.” (Shapiro, 55-56) Which it seemed to be in metaphorical terms even if it wasn’t “it” in literal terms, in the sense that when WWII was over the nightmares of the battle lingered long after everyone stepped foot in their home.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder became a driving force to The Beat Writer. While not all Beat writers were ex-military, it seemed that the ex-military post-war feelings behind the first and second World Wars were mixing unkindly with the looming Vietnam War creating anxiety for what the world was turning into, which was apparently a big fighting ball of testosterone. So, animosity rose even higher between people who expressed political opinions, people who worked the institutionalized government-imposed grind, people who didn’t look the same, and all the –isms man-made language could create. Beat Writers were not necessarily the creators of these hypocrisies in life but more so the ones who felt all of what came from them. All of their feelings mixed horribly with these experimental drug addicts and alcoholics looking to escape the sad realities of life. The un-funny funny thing about life is that when you try to escape the problems and the fears they only come back twice as bad, if not exponentially more, however, what does that truly matter when literary masterpieces are born to try and explain and unify those who should never have been divided, to begin with.
The Beat Writer’s seemed to glorify alcohol and drug use in The Portable Beat Reader by Ann Charters when Gary Snyder puts it as, “a good deal of personal insight can be obtained by the intelligent use of drugs” (Charters, 306) in his “Note On The Religious Tendencies”. They also opposed governmental reasoning and solutions, like how Tuli Kupferberg wrote 1001 WAYS TO BEAT THE DRAFT where “Flying to the moon and refus[ing] to come home”, “Becom[ing] Secretary of Defense” or “State” or “Health” rank up there with death, and menstruating. (Charters, 387)
It seems that the facts are fairly easy here since history always has a way of repeating itself somehow, someway, when laying the yellow bricks for that intended road to humanities salvation from all things evil, remember to start Victorian. Starting Victorian will ensure that all women have no opinion to oppose man's will when he says that he is feeling like jumping into battles just to preserve peace. Then when that false peace finally tuckers out the brilliant minds who thought it up, to begin with, go jazzy, go glitzy, go glamorous and go in debt. By acting cocky to ragtime music while ticking off creditors one will ensure that some bomb is inevitably going to drop from the sky and start that whole feeling of jumping into battles to preserve peace thing will occur again. Once that mass genocide of testosterone has subsided go drink some more, go get high on drugs instead of music this time and then go rehab it up with the best brains roaming around so that when the next departure into battle occurs people can write about science fiction as reality because we will have all lost our minds with anger and individuality by then.
Works Cited:
It seems that the facts are fairly easy here since history always has a way of repeating itself somehow, someway, when laying the yellow bricks for that intended road to humanities salvation from all things evil, remember to start Victorian. Starting Victorian will ensure that all women have no opinion to oppose man's will when he says that he is feeling like jumping into battles just to preserve peace. Then when that false peace finally tuckers out the brilliant minds who thought it up, to begin with, go jazzy, go glitzy, go glamorous and go in debt. By acting cocky to ragtime music while ticking off creditors one will ensure that some bomb is inevitably going to drop from the sky and start that whole feeling of jumping into battles to preserve peace thing will occur again. Once that mass genocide of testosterone has subsided go drink some more, go get high on drugs instead of music this time and then go rehab it up with the best brains roaming around so that when the next departure into battle occurs people can write about science fiction as reality because we will have all lost our minds with anger and individuality by then.
Works Cited:
- vanDyke, Henry. "Liberty Enlightening The World." A Treasury of War Poetry British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917, The Riverside Literature Series, Kindle Location. 225.
- Gibson, Wilfred Wilson. “Between The Lines.” A Treasury of War Poetry British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917, The Riverside Literature Series, Kindle Location. 1830.
- Ratcliff, A. Victor. “Optimism.” A Treasury of War Poetry British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917, The Riverside Literature Series, Kindle Location. 1618.
- Shapiro, Harvey. Poets of World War II. New York, Library of America, 2003. Pgs. 13, 52, 55-56.
- Charters, Ann. The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books, 1992. Pgs. 306, 387.
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