~JEFFREY C. ALFIER~

TWO ANTHOLOGIES OF WAR POETRY: THE WOUND AND THE DREAM: SIXTY YEARS OF AMERICAN POEMS ABOUT THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR AND RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH: AMERICAN POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR

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Like poems of any tragedy the magnitude of the Spanish Civil War, 
the best are not the ones gloriously trumpeting broad causes or agendas, 
but instead are those that reveal poignant particulars of individual lives.

With the publication of The Wound and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poetry about the Spanish Civil War, English professor and cultural historian Cary Nelson has produced a meticulous and compelling anthology of poetry that underscores the fascination that the antifascist cause of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) has long held for American poets.  When the war ended, two groups of poets more than all others returned to the undying theme of Spain: Spanish exiles and Americans.  Throughout his book of one hundred and twelve poems compiled from fifty-six poets, Nelson gives readers a sense of "the collective and almost choral nature" of the war's poetry, as well as its "lyrical and rhetorical invention" that gives it its most moving and persuasive expression (6, 28).  Moreover, as he reminds us, the poetry of this war was read on the streets and in the trenches. 
     Like poems of any tragedy the magnitude of the Spanish Civil War, the best are not the ones gloriously trumpeting broad causes or agendas, but instead are those that reveal poignant particulars of individual lives. In an allusion to "Clio: the first Muse" and the inevitability of wartime death, James Rorty writes, "Life takes its final meaning / From chosen death; this stirrup-cup / History, the ancient, greedy bitch " (92).  Describing the lives of children crippled by bombing from Franco's aircraft, Leslie Ullman speaks to the way "Someone dressed them / in lace and gabardine, like the antique figures... / Their deaths seemed to rise inside them / like the sleep of the newly-born" (240).  Yet, in many of the poems, polemic slogans interspersed in the lines disturb the continuity of the verse.  Norman Rosten inserts, "MADRID! : TOMB! : FASCISM!" amid the lines of his poem, "The March "(97).  However, the war's contemporaneous poets could not afford the literary luxury of distance from their subject; theirs was a moral urgency. 
     There is little to criticize in this enlightening volume.  Nelson goes a bit far when he asserts that Americans willfully forgot the meaning of the Spanish Civil War.  Secondly, a more complete index would prove helpful.  Perhaps the year the poems were written should have been included with the poems themselves, not in the "Contents" pages (better access to context). 
     These light criticisms aside, Nelson's volume is a welcome addition to the growing body of poetry resurrected from under the avalanche of High Modernism, and is an excellent companion to earlier anthologies such as The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse (Valentine Cunningham, 1980), and Poetry of the Spanish Civil War (Marilyn Rosenthal, 1975).  Though many question the motives of the Stalinists and the Iberian Left that composed so much of the antifascist forces, the poetry of the Spanish Civil War—as Nelson conclusively shows—"was one of the indisputable terms in which history burnt its name into the living flesh of its time" (54).  This certainly makes historians and poets appreciative of Nelson's volume.
 
 

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Whatever modern readers determine about the aesthetic and literary quality 
of these poems, a high percentage of them tethered debates surrounding 
American intervention to woman's suffrage, international socialism, civil rights, 
workers' quality of life, the cause of world peace, and militarism.  As such, 
this poetic outpouring must be seen in its cultural and social context . . . 

English professor Mark W. Van Wienan has mined a wealth of poetry from over 140 mainly obscure sources that underscores an explicit American response to "the push and pull of political commitments" of a society coming to grips with the war which irrevocably ended their last vestiges of international isolationism (26).  In Rendezvous with Death: American Poems of the Great War, Mark W. Van Wienan expands upon his earlier work, Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War (Cambridge, 1997).  The book is arranged 
in chronological chapters, with a 64-page Introduction, and illuminating introductions to each chapter. 
     Before its declaration of war against the Central Powers, America had to a large extent inherited Britain's Kiplingesque belief that the Great War was being waged for the survival of the entire civilized world.  Yet, many Americans were non-interventionists, or outright pacifists, believing that the country should not support the Allies unless the rights of the oppressed at home were satisfied first.  Whatever modern readers determine about the aesthetic and literary quality of these poems, a high percentage of them tethered debates surrounding American intervention to woman's suffrage, international socialism, civil rights, workers' quality of life, the cause of world peace, and militarism.  As such, this poetic outpouring must be seen in its cultural and social context, for how else are Americans today to make sense of poems supporting such causes, or those calling for patriotic knitting, food conservation, or expressing simplistic jingoism and angry polemics.   But as Van Wienan reminds us, the poems of those war years were evaluated not for literary quality, but for their partisanship.   Still, today's readers will find many of them quite good, their subject matter transcending the age they were written, an age where newspapers, booklets, pamphlets, and journals became the exigent tool of a poetry that rose from all levels of society.  There are a few American female poets who are not included in Van Wienan's anthology, but they may not appear because they were expatriates, or were otherwise obscure (see Nosheen Khan, Woman's Poetry of the First World War, 1998). 
     The broad themes of the 150 poems of this anthology touch upon issues still relevant in the dawn of the 21st century: institutionalized violence, political repression, militarism, and international relations.  I agree with Van Wienan's assessment that the most important legacy of these poems is that of the war's dissident voices, since in them lies the true expression of American pluralism and democratic tolerance.  This fact alone makes this book an invaluable contribution to the study wartime poetry.
 

Nelson, Cary (Editor).  The Wound and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poems about the Spanish Civil War.  Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002.   ISBN: 0-252-07070-4  $19.95

Van Wienan, Mark W. (Editor). Rendezvous withDeath: American Poems of the Great War.  Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2002.  ISBN: 0-252-07059-3  $19.95
 
 

© by Jeffrey C. Alfier