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 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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| E. E. Cummings |
Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 14, 1894. He... More > |
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Poems About War |
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Henry V, Act III, Scene I [One more unto the breach, dear friends] by William Shakespeare |
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The Iliad, Book I, Lines 1-15 by Homer |
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War Music [Down on your knees, Achilles] by Christopher Logue |
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A Wedding at Cana, Lebanon, 2007 by Tom Sleigh |
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April 27, 1937 by Timothy Steele |
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Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002 by Marvin Bell |
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Before the Deployment by Jehanne Dubrow |
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Death Fugue by Paul Celan |
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Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen |
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Eighth Air Force by Randall Jarrell |
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For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon |
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For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell |
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Grass by Carl Sandburg |
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I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger |
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I Hear an Army by James Joyce |
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Memorial Day for the War Dead by Yehuda Amichai |
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Mosul by David Hernandez |
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My Father on His Shield by Walt McDonald |
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Peace by Henry Vaughan |
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Peace by Gerard Manley Hopkins |
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Phantom Noise by Brian Turner |
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Poems about War |
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Romance by Charles Reznikoff |
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Ships That Pass in the Night by Paul Laurence Dunbar |
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Some People by Wislawa Szymborska |
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Spoken From the Hedgerows by Jorie Graham |
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The Coming of War: Actæon by Ezra Pound |
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The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals by Norman Dubie |
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The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden |
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The Mask of Anarchy [Excerpt] by Percy Bysshe Shelley |
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The War After the War by Debora Greger |
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The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail |
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Untitled [1950 June 27] by Don Mee Choi |
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War and Hell, XVI [I am a great inventor] by Ernest Crosby |
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War Is Kind [excerpt] by Stephen Crane |
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| i sing of Olaf glad and big
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by E. E. Cummings |
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XXX
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or
his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"
straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)
but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"
our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died
Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too
preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.
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Copyright 1931, © 1959, 1991 by the Trustees for E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George J. Firmage, from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. |
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