Review
"For anyone unacquainted with the history of war poetry in Britain and America during the twentieth century, Goldensohn's book is a good introduction." -- The Nation


Book Description
Dismantling Glory spans three major wars in pursuit of the most personal and most powerful words ever written about the horrors of battle, by the very soldiers who have put their lives on the line. After placing the war lyric in literary and historical context, Lorrie Goldensohn assesses, in detail, the work of Wilfred Owen, Keith Douglas, and Randall Jarrell, as well as the Vietnam-era poets: W. D. Ehrhart, Bruce Weigl, Yusef Komunyakaa, David Huddle, and Doug Anderson.


About the Author
Lorrie Goldensohn has taught at Vassar College since 1982. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Tether and Dreamwork, and Elizabeth Bishop: The Biography of a Poetry, also published by Columbia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dismantling Glory presents the most personal and powerful words ever written about the honors and horrors of battle, by the very soldiers who put their lives on the line. Focusing on American and English poetry from World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War, Lorrie Goldensohn, a poet and pacifist, affirms that most twentieth-century war poetry is fundamentally antiwar. She examines the changing nature of the war lyric and takes on the literary thinking of two countries separated by their common language.

This book not only discusses the poetry of trench warfare but also shows how the lives of civilians - women and children in particular - entered a global war poetry dominated by air power, invasion, and occupation. Goldensohn argues that World War II blurred the boundaries between battleground and home front, thus bringing women and civilians into war discourse as never before. She discusses the interplay of fascination and disapproval in the texts of twentieth-century war and notes the way in which homage to war heroes and victims contends with revulsion at wars horror and waste.

Dismantling Glory is an original and compelling look at the way twentieth-century war poetry posited new relations between masculinity and war, changed and complicated the representation of war, and expanded the scope of antiwar thinking.

SYNOPSIS