Article

2003-02-12 Home Front

James Taranto's "Best of the Web" at the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal site sponsored a poetry contest for pro-war poets. The results are in, and there's some impressive work on display, even if it's not quite Rudyard Kipling. Some of it is quite stirring:

"Traders' Call to Arms"

Our apparent greed mocked by the media;
Our insatiable need condemned by professors,
Who condemn materiality, lest their
Discussions of Foucault affect nothing.
Until you are part of a trading floor
You will not understand the excitement of
Real-time screens, of offers to buy that
Bid up dealers' prices around the globe
Instantaneously, uniting buyers and
Sellers in an enterprise that promotes
Enterprise. 3,000 dead by terrorists.
I'm short on Afghanistan, long on bonds.
Liberty is specious without a sound
And active economy. Position yourselves.

--Eugene Schlanger (in memory of Constantine Economos, 104th Floor, 2 WTC)

"To The Enemy"

Ours is the only nation on this earth
with might to smash every Al Qaeda cell
whose homicidal members measure worth
by deaths inflicted on the Infidel.
Go reprehend the British and the French
who left you to your native tyranny.
There is no cave, Mujahedeen, no trench
to shield you from the sweetest victory
since the Iraqis, cast out of Kuwait,
fled from our tanks, a war so nearly won,
or since your forebears whom we deem so great
fled from Seville and storied Aragon-
since Caesar sank Queen Cleopatra's fleet
and ground your sands beneath his sandaled feet.

--Tim Murphy

Other contributions are more light-hearted:

While the war in Iraq is engendered,
One reaction is already tendered:
Mais bien sur, c'est tres chic!
Yes, in less than a week,
The French have already surrendered

--Adam Flisser

"Poets Against the War"

For sensitive poets
We have this news:
Saddam is why God
Made B-52s

--Jim Godwin

Saddam sings, "I am
Iraq, I am an island."
Soon: Sounds of Silence.

--Brian Donnelly

There's even a five-line Fisking of Robert Fisk:

There once was a writer named Fisk
Who opined at "great personal risk"
Till a teed off Afghani
With the strength of my granny
Kicked his "what used to be kissed"

--Tom Spaulding

Posted by Mike 2003-02-12 01:27 pm|| || Front Page|| [11135 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 UPDATE: More good verse can be found at the new Poets for the War website. Contributions welcomed.

Posted by Mike 2003-02-12 14:11:05|| 2003-02-12 14:11:05|| Front Page Top

#2 I've always thought of Haiku is poetry for people who can't rhyme worth a damn. So, how about the Rantburg Haiku challenge?

I'll start. Ominously.

**********

The new sun thunders into life
sand fuses
and the Black Stone melts

Posted by Patrick Phillips 2003-02-12 18:49:34|| 2003-02-12 18:49:34|| Front Page Top

#3 UPDATE #2: Noemie Emery, writing in The Weekly Standard, describes antiwar poets:

"They have left the American street for the Ivory Tower, the most airless room of the national attic, and the one most inclined to inversion and cluelessness. This is an attack of the unknown, armed with the unreadable, in defense of the unconscionable.

"Call them the Edna St. Vincent Malaise."

Posted by Mike 2003-02-13 05:22:51|| 2003-02-13 05:22:51|| Front Page Top

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