Dead Soldiers (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: James Fenton
- First Published: 1981
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: 1970’s, Revolutionaries, Alcoholism or alcoholics, Substance abuse, Asia or Asians, Death or dying, Food, Soldiers, Southeast Asia, Princes or princesses
The Poem
“Dead Soldiers” is James Fenton’s narrative of his memory of a luncheon engagement in 1973 on the edge of a jungle battlefield with a member of the Cambodian royal family—Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey—during that country’s long-running civil war. The poem’s ten stanzas contain varying numbers of lines of free verse that are deliberately conversational, straightforward, and nonpoetic in the traditional sense. This is poetry as news report, a deceptively simple account that gains power from the total impact of the poem rather than from the individual lines...
[The entire page is 1603 words long]
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