Sherry Chandler

“Voices in Wartime” has opened in urban areas on both coasts – but not, as far as I know anywhere around here.

Here is an excerpt from Michael O’Sullivan’s review in the Washington Post:

It’s interesting that, in a documentary about war poetry that supplements literary readings with the occasional use of exceedingly bloody archival war footage, the words more than hold their own against the pictures. Interesting, but unsurprising, given that, as West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. William Lennox notes at the beginning of director Rick King’s short but unslight film, “Voices in Wartime,” there is no better genre than verse to articulate the range of emotions experienced by the soldier in battle — from joy and elation to horror and fear.

And from Ann Hornaday’s:

Does anyone remember Poets Against the War? That was the group formed in 2003, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, when first lady Laura Bush organized a White House poetry symposium and promptly canceled it when word got out that several poets intended to criticize the impending war.

The event galvanized a movement of artists around the world to stage readings as part of a larger political antiwar movement. “Voices in Wartime,” a documentary by Rick King, captures the idealism of the activists behind Poets Against the War and, unintentionally, their arrogance. Often speaking with self-righteousness and sanctimony, they come across as surprisingly devoid of self-awareness and healthy ambivalence.
…

Stodgily structured by intercutting grisly stock footage with talking heads and muddy videos of Poets Against the War events, “Voices in Wartime” isn’t nearly as cinematically inspiring as many of the poets it brings to light. But its pedagogical tone perfectly suits it for viewing in classrooms, where with luck new generations will discover such magnificent writers as the World War I poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

Ironically, their true successors can’t be found in “Voices in Wartime,” but they can be seen in the recent documentary “Gunner Palace,” with its soldiers delivering raps while their fellow servicemen tap out beats on the hoods of Humvees. It’s just their tough urgency that this film, in all its good intentions, sorely lacks.

I have seen trailers for “Gunner Palace” and from what I can see, it is a truly powerful picture of war and warriors. It has opened in approximately the same coastal cities as “Voices in Wartime.”

Everybody ought to see both these films, but I guess you can’t see these things here in W’s heartland.

More reviews of “Voices in Wartime” here. Reviews of “Gunner Palace” here.

Before Mammoth Cave National Park was established in 1941, the cave was in the hands of a series of private owners who used it for various purposes. One, Dr. John Croghan, briefly established a tuberculosis hospital within the cave. Dr. Croghan’s negro slave Stephen Bishop, who worked as a cave guide, explored and mapped much of the cave in the early 19th century. Bishop became widely famous in his own time and in ours.

In the late 2oth century, the young poet Davis McCombs also worked as tour guide in Mammoth Cave National Park. McCombs has become a bit of a legend himself. Ultime Thule, the collection of poems he wrote out of his experiences as a cave guide, not only won the Yale Younger Poets competition in 2000 but also was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award that year.

McCombs might be called the third generation of Kentucky poets to use the sonnet for nontraditional purposes. (The others are Jesse Stuart and Jim Wayne Miller.) Ultime Thule contains two sonnet sequences about the cave, the opening and longer (19 poems) in the voice of Stephen Bishop, the closing (10 poems) in the voice of a modern cave guide. The penultimate poem in the Bishop sequence deals with his fame.

Fame

It was the night before the night before last
when I sat so deep in thought by the fire.
The Doctor boasts that I was the merest germ
of a man when he bought me. Through him,
I was able, in time, to acquire a knowledge
of science, a considerable degree of culture.
Through him, my fame—the subject of articles,
my map distributed widely. But fame,
like the fire in the hearth, must be fed:
a bundle of twigs soon needs a log to stay
alight. And then full thirty cords of oak.
I am ever in search of exploits, discoveries.
Some nights I wake in darkness to know
a greater darkness waits. A hillside. A mouth.