Said, Maha El. “A War for Peace: Poets Against the War.” Studies in the Humanities. 31.1, 2004. 36-59.

Addresses antiwar literature as a counterattack and words as weapons. Also provides a strong discussion of war myth in Homer and Virgil. Helpful clarification on counting/naming and the embedded violence.

“The relation between poetry and war is, as W.S. Merwin puts it, old as poetry itself; it can bet traced back to Homer and Virgil with the epics of courage and valor, of heroes battling against evil and mythical gods bringing to the righteous. Today’s wars, however, do not invoke mythical gods nor praise chivalry; modern wars, with the massive destruction and the reduction of the ‘moral’ to economic power and control, cannot fit the ‘fairy tale’ version of war where the ‘hero’ restores the moral balance after a lot of ‘sacrifice’” (Lakoff in Said 1).

“With words as their only weapon, poets resist, explain and oppose war: waging their own war: a war for peace” (Said 1).

Walden: “‘Where there’s war, there’s an anti-war of writers writing, readers reading veterans recalling what they served for’” (Said 1).

“As, to use Baudrillard’s words it becomes ‘a masquerade of information’ (40)” (Said 12).

“As Dawes has noted quoting Stalin: ‘a single death is a tragedy, . . . , but a million deaths is a statistic’ (30). Therefore, poets present the tragedy of war instead of body counts, they push readers out of unawareness that is induced by news that is expurgated, to question who really counts? And What really counts?” (Said 14).