Whether Thersites in Homer鈥檚 Iliad, Wilfred Owen in 鈥淒ulce et Decorum Est,鈥 or Allen Ginsberg in 鈥淲ichita Vortex Sutra,鈥 poets have long given solitary voice against the brutality of war. The hasty cancellation of the 2003 White House symposium 鈥淧oetry and the American Voice鈥 in the face of protests by Sam Hamill and other invited guests against the coming 鈥渟hock and awe鈥 campaign in Iraq reminded us that poetry and poets still have the power to challenge the powerful.
Behind the Lines investigates American war resistance poetry from the Second World War through the Iraq wars. Rather than simply chronicling the genre, Philip Metres argues that this poetry gets to the heart of who is authorized to speak about war and how it can be represented. As such, he explores a largely neglected area of scholarship: the poet鈥檚 relationship to dissenting political movements and the nation.
In his elegant study, Metres examines the ways in which war resistance is registered not only in terms of its content but also at the level of the lyric. He proposes that protest poetry constitutes a subgenre that鈥攂y virtue of its preoccupation with politics, history, and trauma鈥攑robes the limits of American lyric poetry. Thus, war resistance poetry鈥攁nd the role of what Shelley calls unacknowledged legislators鈥攊s a crucial, though largely unexamined, body of writing that stands at the center of dissident political movements.
鈥淢etres offers a strong riposte to cultural critics who dismiss poetry as monologic and ahistorical; it shows the abiding critical function of the genre by poets who have not only thematized the horrors of war but participated actively in its opposition. At a moment when narrative has become the generic default for cultural criticism, Behind the Lines restores poetry to its important function as a socially symbolic form.鈥濃擬ichael Davidson, University of California, San Diego
