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Poems Peace War

Poems of Peace and War

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ABOUT 

  • ABOUT Jorie Graham

    Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1950, the daughter of a journalist and a sculptor. She was raised in Rome, Italy, and educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris before attending New York University as an undergraduate, where she studied filmmaking. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Yusef Komunyakaa

    Yusef Komunyakaa was born in 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He served in the United States Army from 1969 to 1970 as a correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross during the Vietnam War, earning him a Bronze Star. He began writing poetry in 1973. In 1994, his New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Philip Metres

    Born in San Diego in 1970, Philip Metres  grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and graduated from Holy Cross College in 1992.  After stints as a temp in sundry offices in Boston and Philadelphia, Metres went to Indiana University, where he earned a doctorate in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 2001.  Since then, his writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. Profile

  • ABOUT Dunya Mikhail

    Born in Baghdad, Dunya Mikhail has published four collections of poetry in Arabic and two in English. In 2001, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. Her collection The War Works Hard won PEN’s Translation Award, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the best books of 2005. She lives in Michigan and works as an Arabic resource teacher for Dearborn Public Schools. Profile

  • ABOUT Gary Snyder

    Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco in 1930. He has published sixteen books of poetry and prose, including Turtle Island (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He has received many awards, such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2003. He is a professor of English at the University of California. Profile

  • ABOUT Brian Turner

    Brian Turner is a soldier and poet whose debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, The New York Times's “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the United States Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea. Profile
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Click play to listen. Recorded on November 5, 2006.

The war poem has evolved from the classical epic to the bitter elegy of modernism. But can poetry plumb the experience of contemporary war? Can it make anything actually happen? What about peace? Poet and translator Philip Metres reviews the war poem’s tradition and development. The discussion is followed by readings from poets including Pulitzer Prize-winners Jorie Graham (Overlord, 2005), Yusef Komunyakaa (Neon Vernacular, 1993), and Gary Snyder (Turtle Island, 1974). Iraq War veteran Brian Turner (Here, Bullet, 2005) and Iraqi-born Dunya Mikhail (The War Works Hard, 2005) also read from their work.

Tags

Poetry, Veterans, War, Violence, War Resistance, Vietnam, Iraq

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