The poetry of the first world war is famous: commemorated and memorialised, often through the death of the authors. Who can forget that Isaac Rosenberg or Wilfred Owen never made it back; both dying in 1918 towards the end of the Great War. Their lasting legacy was a powerful set of poems celebrated by contemporaries and canonised. Yet far more popular remained poems of war, glory, duty, honour and pride at the time. Readers did not wish to fumble for reflection or cast their minds to froth corrupted lungs. Their imperial horizons were bound by Kipling.
Contemporary wars have also brought out poetry from all ranks. Its rawness and debt to preceding soldier poets is clear, but those untaught in literature who are moved to pen prove better at articulation than academics wedded to obscurantism. Experience clarifies. I am not sure that this poetry will stand for many years; and, gathers across all views: from those who view the wars as unjust to working class men angered by ranting crtics outside army recruitment offices:
For a middle class student, from here or a foreign state,
to call a working class soldier scum, makes me more than irate.
Your own rights of freedom are paid by us scum,
who stand up against evil, in front of hells guns.
There are a new generation of soldier poets writing in Iraq or Afghanistan who deserve to be read.