~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
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.
* * *
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
