Voices in Wartime

I was originally skeptical when I first heard about this documentary about how poetry has been the most expressive medium to voice the experience of war by combatants and civilians. But, after seeing it, I have to say that it delivered.

VOICES IN WARTIME is a documentary that has many aspects: it is an important investigation into how poets have responded to war from the Civil War through the two World Wars, Korean and Vietnam Wars and it is an homage to the fallen and to those who have been permanently damaged by war's dissection of the psyche, whether that be called combat fatigue, shell shock, battle rattle or the now accepted term Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. One has only to read the works of Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Langston Hughes to find the core of this deeply moving project and film.

Voices in Wartime brings a poetic evocation of the human cost of armed conflict from the Civil War to the present, which also includes an in-depth inclusion of Wilfred Owen's groundbreaking WWI writing. I was moved by the resolve of poets across America to come together to protest before the beginning of the current conflict in Iraq; a movement which emerged, ironically, from a planned White House celebration for poets, which Laura Bush was scheduled to host.