War Poets of WWII

[the hairy bloke]

My Mum is into poetry and has been looking at war poetry from WWII.

I wondered what American war poetry there was, as well as British?

And on another tangent what German, Italian and Japinese poetry there is in translation?

 

[Harp]

Where is the bard, whose soul can now
Its high presuming hopes avow?
Where he who thinks, with rapture blind,
This hallow'd work for him designed?

William Collins, Ode on the Poetical Character

The First World War cast subsequent martial effort in a dark and harsh
unforgiving light where silence deafens rather than kindles the poetic soul.
Two notable exceptions are Keith Douglas and Anthony Hecht.
Others exist and still more await discover.
Consider Wilfrid Meynell's rescue of Francis Thompson,
and then imagine that this charity did not occur, and listen to the silence.
Then the silence is broken. Johannes Bobrowski; Anna Swirszczynska;
Miroslav Holub; Paul Celan and others formerly hid in obscurity are revealed.

Second World War poets and their poetry are being discovered.
And the silence is lessened. Considerably so.