In
the late summer of 1970 in response to the war in Vietnam, Edwin Starr topped the Billboard charts, singing
"War-- huh yeah, What is it good for? Absolutely nothing."
Sixty-five years before "War" topped the music charts, W.B. Yeats wrote a challenging short poem about war that asked, "War poetry – what is it good for?"
Sixty-five years before "War" topped the music charts, W.B. Yeats wrote a challenging short poem about war that asked, "War poetry – what is it good for?"
Henry Allingham, WWI veteran |
On
being asked for a War Poem
I
think it better that in times like these
A
poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We
have no gift to set a statesman right;
He
has had enough of meddling who can please
A
young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or
an old man upon a winter’s night.
--William Butler Yeats
--William Butler Yeats
While
Yeats' poem doesn't sound as outraged as Starr's lyrics, there's an edge and an
attitude here as well, and at least two very different ways of making sense of
the poem. The
poem can be read in the context of WB Yeats' letters and other writings, an
example of wonderfully snarky literary gossip at its best – or worst – that asks
the question, "What is good poetry?"
or….
The
poem can be read on its own terms, as it asks the question, "What is
poetry good for?"
First
the literary gossip. Eighteen years after the war had ended, Yeats edited
an anthology of poetry that included his choices of the best poems from the end
of the 19th century through 1935. And he pointedly
omitted the British poets of the First World War. Nothing from
Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, or the others –
nothing. Yeats defended his decision in the anthology's introduction,
writing, "I have a distaste for certain poems written in the midst of
the great war; they are in all anthologies….The writers of these poems were
invariably officers of exceptional courage and capacity…-- but felt bound, in
the words of the best known, to plead the suffering of their men. In poems that
had for a time considerable fame, written in the first person, they made that
suffering their own. I have rejected these poems....passive suffering is not a
theme for poetry. In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who
dies."
Many
authors believe that Yeats' comments were a thinly veiled allusion to Wilfred
Owen's comments about war poetry. Before his death in 1918, Owen had
written a draft preface to his poetry: "This book is not about heroes.
English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or land,
nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except
War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity
of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in
no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful."
Where
Yeats' decision becomes much more interesting – and gossipy – is in a letter he
wrote to a friend. Not intended for publication, Yeats's comments
not only dismiss Owen and the war poets, but are fascinatingly personal with a
bit of spite: "My anthology continues to sell…& the
critics get more & more angry. When I excluded Wilfred Owen, whom I
consider unworthy of the poets' corner of a country newspaper, I did not know I
was excluding a revered sandwich-board Man of the revolution & that some
body has put his worst & most famous poem in a glass-case in the British
Museum-- however if I had known it I would have excluded him just the same. He
is all blood, dirt & sucked sugar stick…. There is every excuse for him but
none for those who like him. . . ." Ouch.
It's fascinating to discover the ways in which poems and poets of the First World War have been alternatively dismissed and venerated over the years. But Yeats' "On being asked for a war poem" is much more than a historical debate about taste – it deserves to be read and understood on its own merits.
It's fascinating to discover the ways in which poems and poets of the First World War have been alternatively dismissed and venerated over the years. But Yeats' "On being asked for a war poem" is much more than a historical debate about taste – it deserves to be read and understood on its own merits.
WB Yeats |
Yeats
wrote the poem in 1915 and sent it in a letter to Henry James, who had asked
him specifically to write a poem that addressed the war and its politics.
Yeats first titled the poem "To a friend who has asked me to
sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" – quite long-winded for a
six-line poem! When he sent it back to James, he shortened the title to
"A Reason for Keeping Silent." The title was changed a
third time, appearing in its current version when Yeats included it
a book of his poems published a year after the war ended. I think the current
title is the strongest because it names an action (being asked) and directly
references war.
The
poem seems to imply that a writer can be a soldier or a pacifist or a
protester, but that his actions should speak louder than his versified words:
his mouth should "be silent" when it comes to politics. It is
not the job of poetry to "set a statesman right."* My guess is
that Yeats would scorn the tradition of poet laureates who are charged to write
timely poems relevant to national concerns. Unlike other voices who have
claimed that poets serve as the conscience of a culture – Percy Shelley, for
example, argued that poets were the "unacknowledged legislators of the
world" -- this poem claims a very different role for poetry.
Poetry
meddles in the personal, in the dreams of a young girl and in the backward
looking reflections of an old man. Poems
invade the thoughts and lives of individuals, not "girls"
and "men," but "a young girl" and "an old man." Putting
aside for a minute the fact that only one year later, Yeats wrote a much longer
poem about the Irish political uprising of Easter 1916, "On being asked
for a war poem" asks the reader provocatively, almost teasingly, to
consider why he or she bothers to read poetry. It's a short, personal poem that is willing to
undercut itself as it intimately asks each of us what we think, what we feel,
about poems, the war, and our personal experiences.
Jane
Hirshfield in Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, argues, "Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in
altered ways." That is, poetry changes us, showing us new ways
of living and understanding. About that, perhaps both Owen and Yeats
could have agreed.
*"Conversing
with the World: the Poet in Society" offers a fascinating discussion
of American politics and poetry.
**"In
Praise of Memorizing Poetry – Badly" shares an entertaining story
about the word "meddling" in the poem, considering what the choice
adds to the poem as a whole.
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