Thursday, February 5, 2009

Poetry Book Review: Hopkin's Anthology

America at War



"America At War" is one of the many anthologies by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Highly relevant for today’s world, yet looking back at every American generation from the Revolutionary War forward, we have been affected by war’s horrors.

The poetry collection has eight chapters containing all the major wars, including the current Iraq War. Each chapter starts with a quotation from a political figure of the time then information about the war including the death counts suffered. The rest of the suffering’s told through the poetry of the participants, survivors and poets. This anthology would be great for high school aged students. Opening dialogues about the loss incurred by war.

This is the powerful epilogue written by Ann Wagner:

Vocabulary Lesson

We don’t have wars.
We have conflicts
campaigns
operations
escalations
missions
offensives
preemptive strikes
We don’t have soldiers.
We have
peace keepers
troops
servicemen
service women
forces
coalitions
units.
We don’t have mistakes in combat.
We have
incidents
accidents
friendly fire
flawed intelligence.
We don’t have death.
We have
casualties
loss of life
collateral damage
What we do have
is a careful vocabulary.

Wagner, Ann. 2008. "America At War". Epilogue. Vocabulary Lesson. New York NY: Margaret K. McElderry Books. p. 78-79.

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