War and the Pity of War - Hardcover

Philip, Neil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395849829 ISBN 13: 9780395849828

Publisher: Clarion Books, 1998

Synopsis

This moving and thought-provoking anthology brings together more than 70 poems inspired by the horror and heroism of war. From the eleventh century B.C. to the present day, including translations from Chinese, Latin, Greek, French, Russian, and Japanese, and ranging from poignant lamentation to sardonic humor, a wide selection of voices speak about every aspect of human conflict, exploring the universal themes that have moved poets throughout the ages. Illustrated with striking scratchboard drawings, the poems collected here reveal both the shifts in people's attitudes over time and the ways in which all wars are the same. Brief historical annotations are provided. Index of poets, index of titles and first lines.

About this title

About the Authors

Award-winning artist Michael McCurdy has illustrated more than 170 books for adults and children. His books often explore America’s past, bringing to life its history and traditions. He lives with his wife, Deborah, on a farm in western Massachusetts.

Neil Philip is a noted folklorist and anthologist who has written several books on Native American and multicultural themes for Clarion, including IN A SACRED MANNER I LIVE, which was named both a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He lives in England.

Reviews

Grade 5 Up-A strikingly illustrated collection of poems with a decidedly anti-war sentiment. The selections, covering conflicts from ancient Persia to modern-day Bosnia, are by a wide variety of poets, from the well known (Tennyson, Whitman, Sandburg, Auden), to the obscure (Anakreon from ancient Greece and 11th-century Chinese poet Bunno), to relatively unknown contemporary poets from all over the world. Most of the poems, however, arise from experiences of the two World Wars. They represent a variety of styles and almost all are shaded by an elegiac mood expressing the misery and horrors of war. Though many of the works can be found in other anthologies, the artwork here enhances them all, even Yeats's masterful "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death." The stark and simple scratchboard drawings are reminiscent of the Ernie Pyle illustrations from World War II and are as memorable as the best propaganda. The poems are easily accessed by three indexes: poet, title, and first line. The only drawback is that, despite the diversity of voices and experiences, the one-sided presentation tends to come off as one-noted and diminishes the power of the individual works.
Herman Sutter, Saint Pius X High School, Houston, TX
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This startling and honest presentation of the horrors of war from Philip and McCurdy (American Fairy Tales, 1996, etc.) uses poems to thoughtfully balance the often romanticized vision of battle as an expression of bravery and honor. Terror, agony, mass slaughter, absurdity, pointlessness, and cruelty are the subjects of poets writing from ancient times to the present; there are also elegies for warriors, celebrating their brave deaths. Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, and Stephen Crane share pages with Anakreon and Simonides; there are contributors from Beirut and Bosnia, as well as from the death trains of WWII. Among McCurdy's somber and realistic black-and-white illustrations are dead soldiers hanging on barbed wire, and a lone soldier standing in a graveyard, holding his head as he says goodbye to those who have died on the fields. The book makes vivid humankind's innate darkness and makes war painful again. (indexes) (Poetry. 10-14) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 6 and up. With so much attention focused on Spielberg's war movie, Saving Private Ryan, teens will be open to this somber anthology and to the questions the poems raise for each of us. Is war about glory, as in Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" and in the traditional war songs of the Ojibwa? Or is war about horror, as in most twentieth-century poetry? Philip's answer in his fine introduction is that even the poetry about the cruelty of war records the bravery and dignity of soldiers and civilians. As in all noteworthy world anthologies, the meaning is also in the connections across time and place (from ancient China and classical Greece to Hiroshima, Vietnam, and Bosnia), with much in translation from the French, German, Russian, Japanese, and more. At the center are the great World War I poets, many of them soldiers, who saw not the honor, but the futility. A brief note with each poem indicates when it was written and which war it refers to. Wherever they come from, the voices are as plain and recognizable as Auden's Roman Wall soldier who doesn't know why he's there ("I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose"). The book design is spacious and open, with thick paper and clear type, and Michael McCurdy's powerful scratchboard drawings in black and white, some small, some full-page, show the humanity and the ruin of those who came back and those left "hanging on the old barbed wire." Hazel Rochman

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395849829
• ISBN 13: 9780395849828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: McCurdy Michael
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96