Poets of World War II (American Poets Project)
*Starred Review* As Editor Shapiro points out, whereas several World War I poems were well known to those who served in World War II, the only well-known poem of the second war is Randall Jarrell's tiny chiller "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." Perhaps that is because, Shapiro observes, the poems he presents are sharply different from the most famous World War I poems. The latter are by upper-class Englishmen who served as officers, and whose class solidarity shows in sweet patriotism and sweeter camaraderie, which endured after patriotism was soured by disillusionment. Shapiro's selections are by Americans who served as enlistees, older civilians jaundiced by the first war, and conscientious objectors. There is virtually no patriotism in them, and certainly no class feeling. They are the work of individuals wrenched out of normality and compelled to depend for their lives on others who in turn depend on them for theirs, but who don't feel compelled to like one another or to sacrifice themselves for their fellows. This state of consciousness is nowhere more forcefully expressed than in the harrowing long poem "World War II," about the crash of the bomber that Edward Field navigated into the North Sea. Many other fine poems come out of the war in the air, including Shapiro's own, though some of the sharpest, especially Louis Simpson's alarming rhymed quatrains and the excerpt from Peter Bowman's verse novel,Beach Red(1945), are infantrymen's work.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved