Four Poems

John Cole posted Mark Twain's War Prayer. It makes a simple point, powerfully. In the last two weeks I've found myself looking at some poetry as well. The other day I heard poet Robert Pinsky on NPR reading some poems he picked as fitting to read after 9/11. Here they are on the web:


http://slate.msn.com/Poem/01-09-20/Poem.asp

All of the poems you guys linked are great. I had never even heard of the War Prayer. Was this part of the body of work that his descendents suppressed, like the Letters from Satan? It certainly belongs in someone's anthology of the American literature of dissent.


The Slate link that John Feeney posted also has a link to September 1, 1939, by W.H. Auden. Near the end of his life, the poet Robert Lowell mentioned to Norman Podhoretz that, to the effect, "we know about World War II thanks to Auden," and Podhoretz half thought that if it hadn't been for that poem, Lowell might never have received the news.


I read it a long time ago, but I'm startled at how it resonates and inspires at the onset of this new "war," or whatever we'll call it, especially the last lines:


Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Chris,


I reread Auden's poem a few days ago on the recommendation of a friend; it's haunting in ways it never was before.


As for Twain: he wrote this and read it to a visiting friend. When his friend asked him when he was going to publish it, Twain said that it would be published after his death, and it was, in 1923, I believe.


John