ABSTRACT
Nor can Coleridge’s dictum of the best words in the best order apply to this by August Stramm:
Die Steine feinden Fenster grinst Verrat Äste würgen Berge Sträucher blättern raschlig gellen Tod.4
[The stones enemy/window grins treachery/branches strangle/ mountains bushes leaf rustling/yell/death]
The sole function of war poetry is seen to be that of reflecting the events of the wars in order to convey to the audience that war is unacceptable. War poetry is generally taken to mean poetry written during the wars against the war, so that war poetry in effect means contemporary anti-war poetry.5 Some critics, indeed, have limited war poetry even more, to that written by those who had actually fought, and refer to ‘soldier poets’, ‘fighter poets’, or-for the First World War-‘trench poets’, although Edgell Rickword gave the term a different twist in a poem of that name.6 In spite of this, soldier poets did write militaristic verse, just as W.B.Yeats, who was not a fighter poet, displayed a broader understanding of the term ‘war poem’ when he responded negatively to a request for one.7
