tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post4108915945949787305..comments2024-01-02T15:12:14.699+00:00Comments on War Poetry: Swearing and 'Conventional Susceptibilities'Tim Kendallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17917270014209480898noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-5330460293264427622012-01-24T22:09:08.739+00:002012-01-24T22:09:08.739+00:00Old post yet I found this very interesting and sav...Old post yet I found this very interesting and savoured the comments, especially the "troof of it"!! Thanks for sharin.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-60991558153098218152009-07-07T16:58:11.856+01:002009-07-07T16:58:11.856+01:00I am reminded of the fate of American writer John ...I am reminded of the fate of American writer John Dos Passos WWI novel, Three Soldiers. Dos Passos was in the front line at Verdun and later served in the Army Medical Corps. He experienced the worst of war and saw it as "a vast killing machine...utter damned nonesense - a vast cancer spread by lies and self-seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting". When it came to telling his story of war, Dos Passos went for reality and used the strong language of soldiers. <br /><br />He completed Three Soldiers in 1920 and after 13 rejections finally landed a publisher in George Doran & Co. However, Doran was extremely uncomfortable by many passages using the actual speech of soldiers and insisted that they be cut or tempered into what he believed was more acceptable language - not the "common language of the degenerate" as he called it. Dos Passos made the changes and the book was published in 1921 to commercial success. <br /><br />Even with the sanitized lanuage, critics, some of whom had served in the war, attempted to shred Dos Passos' achievement,claiming the book was "untrue" and an "insult" to the nation and those who had served. They labeled it a "dastardly denial of the splendid chivalry which carried many a youth to a soldier's death" and a "Textbook and Bible for Slackers and Coward" (a headline in a Chicago newspaper). Unfortunately the original manuscript appears to be lost, a pity because a publisher today might well have welcomed the opportunity to present this intriguing book as Dos Passos intended it.<br /><br />PamUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10227631102050688021noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-28676889749163739812009-06-30T17:27:19.257+01:002009-06-30T17:27:19.257+01:00and that's the bleedin' troof, that is!and that's the bleedin' troof, that is!ed leimbacherhttp://www.mrebks.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2499661274163551793.post-62750036626992480322009-06-30T15:24:03.191+01:002009-06-30T15:24:03.191+01:00To stand to at dusk with an entire rifle company i...To stand to at dusk with an entire rifle company in U-formation and hear Sgt. Maj. give orders for tomorrow's live-fire ex., with his machine gun mastery of the amazingly flexible "fuck" (ed, ing, er, less, whit, job, etc.) used as every second word, to describe action, situation, person, place, thing... is pure poetry.smsteelehttp://www.warpoet.canoreply@blogger.com