Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War

Partisans and Poets explores the popular poetries that interacted with American political culture during World War I. Van Wienen describes how poetry in mainstream newspapers and major-press anthologies bolstered dominant, nationalist ideologies, and demonstrates how pacifist and socialist verse mobilized minority groups contending for hegemonic power. While recovering the work of many forgotten modern poets, Partisans and Poets asserts that wartime poetry engaged in complex negotiations with specific and often dangerous political and historical circumstances.