A recent essay by poet laureate Tracy K. Smith contends that, through the 1990s, American poetry was gripped by a “firm admonition to avoid composing political poems,” but with the shock of 9/11 and the ensuing war in Iraq, “something shifted in the nation’s psyche” that sparked a renewed flowering of socially engaged political poetry. Three new critical monographs remind us, however, that, at least when it comes to war, poets have always been political. In their respective volumes, Tim Dayton, Rachel Galvin, and Adam Gilbert are concerned with the ways in which poets respond not only to war itself but also the ideology and propaganda that supports it, how their work...

Poetry and the War(s)

Michael S Begnal