Poetry, much like its literary counterpart prose, is a section of literature that is wide-reaching, encompassing a cornucopia of different subcategories and subgenres which can be generally classified under an umbrella term, “poetry”. But one of the most confusing and debated categories of poetry is war poetry. Ranging from the obvious to the near-incomprehensible, war poems can relate to virtually anything about war: being in war, on the front lines, in combat, being active in support of or opposition to war, the aftermath of war, the death correlated to war, the effects on the home front, etc. Essentially anything conflict-related can be and often is classified under the war genre of poetry. Nearly anything could be a war poem, as generally as it seems to be categorized. This has made many readers of war poetry either confused or skeptical, or as was with my case, both. Why, many ask, why is war poetry such a large and looming category, why does it have so many qualities that allow poems of ranging diversities fall under its title? I was one of those very skeptics who questioned this definition and sub-categorization, and after contemplation and dialogue, this is my conclusion to the enigma of war poetry.
Obviously enough, “war poetry” suggests that the poems classified as such are about war. The problem then lies in what war involves, for war poetry is a vast concept and one would expect some correlation, perhaps. Indeed, this is the case with war and its subgenre of poetry. War incorporates many things, ranging from abstract and intangible ideas such as victory or defeat and freedom or oppression to very tangible, and often sensory concepts such as pain, fatigue, and death. So it then becomes reasonable to assume that poems encompassing such concepts could arguably be categorized as poems of war.
Furthermore, if one considers the term “war” by itself, and if one detaches from the term any connotations to the word and then breaks it down to its most integral and basic core, it becomes evident that “war” could be about pretty much any conflict in existence, tangible or intangible, exterior or interior. The “wars” on terror, racism, sexism, poverty, and domestic abuse are all examples of this view on what war really is. It is fairly unreasonable to consider having armed soldiers attempting to fight intangible ideas, and while it is more possible it is also more ridiculous to consider having such soldiers battle the physical advocates of those concepts such as terrorists, members of the KKK, bigots, rich people, and abusers in a “conventional war”. So one of two things have happened: either the term “war” is essentially misused nine times out of ten when it is used at all, or the term “war” no longer only means prolonged physical detrimental conflict.
Going off of this more modernized and broader definition of “war”, it hence becomes more reasonable to categorize poems dealing with such concepts as terror, racism, etc., as “war poetry”. Using the definition of “war” that I have given, the war on terror is just as much a war as the Iraq War or the Persian Gulf War, and the “war on poverty” throughout the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s was no less a war than the Korean and Vietnamese wars. Even in a sense, possibly a facetious one but one nonetheless, there is a “war” of language, denotation, and connotation, and I’ve presented that idea in this blog post. In conclusion to all of this, I would say that “war”, in correlation to “war poetry”, is a vast and vague term and it is suitable for its subgenre of poetry to follow along the same path. As they say, all is fair in love and war, so why not?
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