War Poetry

Today in class, Stephen and Miciah gave a riveting presentation about poems dealing with war. I never thought I would laugh so hard during a presentation about death and destruction, but Miciah was obnoxiously, unintentionally comical. Despite the laughs the duo created, they spoke about very intensive poems. One of the poems that caught my eye was War Means whose author is escaping my memory at the moment. This poem was very ironic and straightforward. Throughout the poem, repetition was blatantly obvious. Almost every line began with “War Means”. The lines, “War Means death / War Means destruction / War Means fire,” shows the abundance of repetition in War Means.

Another reason this poem sparked my fancy was the irony. The poem begins with how awful war is, and all the tragedy that comes along with it. This view is directly contradicted with the last line, “To surrender and give up / War Means peace” displays the irony in War Means. I don’t agree with this theme. How can war mean peace? Yes, at the end of the fighting, one side prevails, thus technically implying there is “peace”.  Look at North Korea and South Korea. War within the peninsula is over, yet they are bitter enemies. War can sometimes mean peace, but lingering animosity jeopardizes that. It is wrongful to assume treaties mean peace.

The other poem that snagged my attention was Grass by Carl Sandburg. One of the characteristics of this work I appreciated was the point of view. Instead of the story being narrated by humans, it was told from the perspective of the grass. The line, “I am the grass; I cover all,” backs up this creative point of view. The real culprit of my liking of Grass is not the point of view, but the theme. Grass discusses how as time passes, people forget the horrors of war. We learn about war, but we will never be able to fully experience it. This is illustrated in the line, “Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: / What place is this? / Where are we now?” This specific line demonstrates how humans tend to forget about important events in history, or at least we cannot comprehend the magnitude of it. Sandburg represents this message in a compelling way in Grass.
In this specific post, I really tried to incorporate quotes effectively into my writing, which was one of the biggest things I wanted to improve on. My usage of quotes in this post shows I am on the right track. I don't have any "floating quotes". I successfully explained the relevance of each quote to my argument. I simply did not stick the quote in there and not write what it is doing there. The best example of this are the last few lines of the third and final paragraph. I begin to talk about how humans are unable to grasp the horrors and severity of war. I back my claim up with a quote from one of the pomes read by explaining how that quote supports my ideas. The progresses my interpretations of the poem, Grass.