Words to Measure a War: Nine American Poets of World War II

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This study explores the war poetry of nine American veterans who served during World War II. It compares the efforts of those men who had established themselves as poets prior to or during the war (Karl Shapiro, Randall Jarrell, John Ciardi, and William Meredith) with those whose poetic careers developed after the war ended (Louis Simpson, James Dickey, Richard Hugo, Howard Nemerov, and Lincoln Kirstein). An examination of their military careers illuminates how their wartime experiences affected the content as well as the style of their poems written both during and after the war. Each man’s poetry was directly influenced by his personal involvement with the combat environment: the closer the combat experience, the more personal the poetry; the more distant the combat experience, the more detached the poetry.