Eighty years ago this month, World War II ended in Europe. Three months later, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced the Japanese Empire to surrender as well. The most destructive war in human history had ended. It was also the deadliest – between 40 million and 50 million people died as a direct result of the war.
The Great War, or World War I, is the war associated with poets. And soldiers and civilians alike did write some incredible poetry. The war brought the Victorian and Edwardian world to a close and can be said to have given birth to the Modern period. Poets, especially those in Britain, chronicled the march to war, the horrific battles and trench warfare, and the aftermath that often seemed so hollow. Some of the most beautiful and startling poems in the English language were written during that war, poems like “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen.
If anything, poetry and its creation were even more present and prolific during World War II, and yet you might be hard-pressed to name a single poem associated with the war.
Some Thursday Readings
Your Prayer – poem by David Whyte.
Offsite – Poem by George Witte at The New Criterion.
Michelle Young on Telling the Story of Rose Valland, the WWII Hero and “Art Spy” – Morgan Leigh Davies at CrimeReads.
“To the Cuckoo,” poem by William Wordsworth – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.
“Ad Ministram,” poem by William Makepeace Thackeray – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
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