I write this from a hotel in Gettysburg, a picturesque, appealing Pennsylvania town if ever there was one.
If Vonnegut is right when he says writing an anti-war novel is like writing an anti-glacier book, can you write an anti-war poem? I suspect the devil is in the details, as always. I'd think that coming at it from a somewhat new, less predictable angle would be important. And understatement, restraint--we keep having loud protests in the same way we keep having wars, so maybe we should consider more muted statements and images, with no gilded abstractions about glory or courage or the tragedy of it all. Just paint me a picture I wouldn't have thought of myself, yet one that captures something important about the subject.
Look what I found on my first click at Poetry Foundation, as I looked for a poem about friendship to go with the breaking bread photo. Sometimes there's a big old spooky presence out there.
After the Wilderness by Andrew Hudgins : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.
In sounding partisan about the Confederacy's dubious cause, Hudgins last line bothers me, and I wonder if he wants us bothered, stirred. I wonder if he's directing us to think of all the ways this is not about individuals, not causes.
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