Life at war is a beautiful poem written in 1966 during the Vietnam War. Denise Levertov shows both the effects of war but also humanity as a whole. She speaks of natural things in the world such as birds chirping and beautiful spider webs. She does a really good job at making the reader comfortable with all the beautiful things such as the nature of the birds and then flips the poem on the edge and go into the darkness of the war. Denise flips her poem into the darkness of the war right after she describes nature as being so beautiful, she goes into the next stanza speaking of babies dying with breast milk coming out of their mouths. The gruesome images she paints for us is to really make you realize how war really affects not only adults but also our children. She goes into other harsh images in her poem such as “flesh burning in Vietnam” (lines 38 and 39). Her poem, in my opinion, could really speak about wars in general and not just Vietnam. She is really able to show the destruction in general that happens in most if not all wars. I believe the goal of her poem is to really make people think and possibly feel regret for supporting this war. I believe she speaks of the babies affected and all the gruesome images just to pull at your heart and make you develop feelings over what she is talking about. If this was her goal I’d say that she succeeded with flying colors. This poem pulls you into her direct opinion of the war and what she believed the effects on humankind were. Denise’s writing really made me think about the war that we are in now as well our past wars, and think about if they were really our war to fight and the destruction that we have helped make. There are definitely wars that we are participated in that were our wars to fight such as the Civil War and our war on Independence. But there have been wars in the past that we just joined in and never saw the outcome of, this makes me wonder if they were really worth the destruction that we caused.
3 Comments
10/4/2019 01:30:03 pm
I really liked how you analyzed the imagery in this poem. Talking about how the poem went from being light and comfortable to dark and brutal is very accurate to the effects of war. I also agree with you how she can be talking about wars in general and not just Vietnam. Good work!
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Rachel Moorman
10/6/2019 12:15:41 pm
This poem was really disturbing to me. I, like a typical reader, got comfortable, and then became VERY uncomfortable while reading it. I give you props for being able to dissect the images displayed here and offer an intelligent reading of the poem. The only thing I can say I was thinking the whole time was "ew, ew, ew, I want to close my eyes, ew." Well done you brave sole. Well Done.
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Katie A
10/6/2019 06:19:43 pm
I like that you mentioned how you thought of today's war, because I thought the same thing. Perhaps she wrote the poem so it would be timeless, always applicable no matter the time period.
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