Raise a roar, abhor war.
In this blog, we have shared some powerful anti-war poetry— “Dulce et Decorum Est” by the great WWI poet Wilfred Owen, several compelling poems by the Vietnam War poet David Connolly, and most recently “My soul isn’t at peace” by 16 year-old San’aa Sultan.
Pro-and anti-war poems have a long history and hundreds of books have been written about them—e.g., Emily Dickinson’s Civil War poetry, Partisans and poets: the political work of American poetry in the Great War—and hundreds of internet sites provide examples—e.g., “I made you look” on YouTube, featured above.
Why is war poetry so influential?
Among the powerful tools of poets are metaphor, imagery, and symbolism, all of which can stimulate strong emotions and increase moral disengagement or engagement.
That is, they can involve euphemistic language, advantageous comparison, minimizing consequences, and other moral disengagement mechanisms as in the original use of the phrase “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”), which originated with the Roman poet Horace who said,
“How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths.”
Conversely, poems can use realistic language to invoke powerful images and dramatize the true nature and consequences of war, as when Owen said,
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs…”
Read some of your own favorite poems and look for examples of mechanisms of moral disengagement or engagement.
And please send us examples of poems—by you or a favorite poet– rejecting war, violence, and hatred and/or promoting peace, justice, and love.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology