Elegy for a Dead Soldier (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
The Poem
Karl Shapiro’s “Elegy for a Dead Soldier” is a long poem consisting of eleven twelve-line stanzas and a six-line envoi, which Shapiro calls the “epitaph.” As part of Shapiro’s V-Letter collection, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944, the poem chronicles one of the poet’s experiences in the battle zones of Australia and New Zealand during World War II. In V-Letter’s introduction, Shapiro noted that he guarded “against becoming a ‘war poet,’” yet clearly his work as a wartime medic shaped much of his early work. “Elegy for a Dead...
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