war poetry and war poets from around the world
Stephen Sossaman A Qatari poet, Mohammed ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, was sentenced in November 2012 to life imprisonment, apparently for writing a poem, “Tunisian Jasmine,” that applauds Arab Spring uprisings. The poem praising specific actions in Tunisia was officially interpreted in Qatar as …
Michael Casey has taken to heart the once revolutionary idea that American poetry should be in the vernacular, reflecting the way people actually speak. Like Walt Whitman, but with his ego under control, Casey is “no sentimentalist, no stander above …
If you liked Michael Casey’s poems about the Viet Nam War in his award-winning Obscenities, as well you should, you’ll also enjoy this second collection. Casey employs the same casual, idiosyncratic style to present anecdotes told in the voice …
In his foreword (whimsically rendered “Deployed Forward”) to this collection of his poems, Alan Farrell ridicules pretension, incomprehensibility, poetry as therapy, literary critical jargon, posturing, the cult of free verse, swingebuckling, and shallow war poetry cliches. You sense that he …
Yes these are mine
I carry them from shower to dreams
and sniff them in dark dawns
I find them in my food
they cling like cigarette smoke in hair
and clog pores like dead skin,
these gray stenches of …