US Poets on War and Peace

Abstract

In April 1917, Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war – “The world must be made safe for democracy” – enshrined liberal-democratic nation-building as central to the US military mission, conceivably extended to every nation on earth (Tooze 9). Such sentiments might be credited with inspiring the most voluminous outpouring of prowar poetry in American literary history. Yet under the idealistic veneer Wilson’s aim was no less than US hegemony in a world capitalist system, in which “political liberty” would promote an open global marketplace that the United States could dominate (Dayton 15). This contradiction between Wilsonian ideal and reality catalyzed, in turn, a body of trenchant antiwar poetry. Broadly speaking, this minority report has become the pattern for most American poetry of war and peace written ever since, which has sought to debunk the recurring fantasy that, in American hands, war might become an instrument of peace and liberation. Yet this largely antiwar trajectory has remained largely at the cultural margins, only under exceptional circumstances speaking for the political mainstream.