by Thomas Waterman Wood
As a veteran-owned buisness, we take pride in the fact that veterans have often numbered themselves among the nation’s best poets. While war and service may only ever be truly understood by those who have experienced it, the poetry of veterans can grant insight into the physical, emotional, and spiritual turmoil of human conflict and presents an opportunity for empathy and compassion when peace inevitably arrives.
Enlistmant can be isolating. From the jargon of military culture and logistical drudgery to the inequitable horrors of combat, military service has the potential to forever divide the individual’s world into civilian and military, leaving veterans somewhere between. Poetry, as it so often does, serves the purpose of connecting these worlds.
The Poetry Foundation has once again provided a powerful collection of poetry around the theme of national service and the realities of war. We’ve included a few of our own selections here, with an emphasis on veteran authors and those who have served on the front. Our hope is that reading will, as it always does, build a bridge; for civilians, between the unfamiliar and the mundane, and for veterans, between one soldier and another.
The American Soldier by Philip Freneau
Deep in a vale, a stranger now to arms,
Too poor to shine in courts, too proud to beg,
He, who once warred on Saratoga’s plains,
Sits musing o’er his scars, and wooden leg.
Remembering still the toil of former days,
To other hands he sees his earnings paid;–
They share the due reward—he feeds on praise.
Lost in the abyss of want, misfortune’s shade.
Far, far from domes where splendid tapers glare,
‘Tis his from dear bought peace no wealth to win,
Removed alike from courtly cringing ‘squires,
The great-man’s Levee, and the proud man’s grin.
Sold are those arms which once on Britons blazed,
When, flushed with conquest, to the charge they came;
That power repelled, and Freedom’s fabrick raised,
She leaves her soldier—famine and a name!
To One of the Brave by Lucian Watkins
Written While a Soldier, at Fort Washakie, Wyo., for First Sergeant William Barnes, Troop “F,” 10th Cavalry, on the Occasion of His Forthy-Fifth Birthday
Though forty-five long years, you say,
Have silvered o’er your head with gray,
Your friends rejoice, to-day, that you
Stand hale and hearty in your “blue.”
Long for Old Glory you have stood
With truest sense of brotherhood;
Long may you live a useful life—
Noble and true in peace of strife.
from The Work [Excerpt] by Gertrude Stein
Hurrah for America.
Here we met a Captain and take him part way.
A day’s sun.
Is this Miss.
Yes indeed our mat.
We meant by this that we were always meeting people and that it was
pleasant.
We can thank you.
We thank you.
Soldiers of course spoke to us.
Come together.
Come to me there now.
They read on our van American Committee in aid of French wounded.
All of it is bit.
Bitter.
This is the way they say we do help.
In the meaning of bright.
Bright not light.
This comforts them when they speak to me. I often discuss America with them and what we hope to do. They listen well and say we hope so too.
We all do.
