War Is Kind | Link to the Imagist Movement of the Twentieth Century
In the following essay the author examines the imagery in Stephen Crane’s “War is Kind,” linking it to the Imagist movement of the twentieth century and to the poetry of World War I.
Stephen Crane’s title poem from his second collection, War is Kind and Other Lines, is representative of his best work. It prefigures many of the modern imagist poets such as Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams in its concise and hardedged descriptions and focus on the “thingness” of the world, yet retains some of the didactic and sentimental qualities of nineteenth-century verse. Combined with a piercing ironic tone, these qualities add layers of complexity to a poem which on first reading appears relatively simple.
Imagism emerged at the beginning of the...
[The entire page is 1497 words long]
Join eNotes
The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:
Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
Tell a friend about War Is Kind at eNotes.
