Introduction

War discourse has been a long tradition in both British and American history and their poetic representation until the invention of“war poetry”as an independent literary genre in the early 20 ^th century. War Poetry, or Poetry of War, witnessed an overwhelming portion of“War Writing”,“War Literature”, or“Literature of War”. That poets have participated in a war and written about his or her experiences, or a non-combatant has composed poems about war scenarios, has been a common composition practice since time immemorial, but it is the young soldier poets of the First World War that established“War Poetry”as an autonomous literary genre. Their“voices of war”have become one of the defining texts of the 20th century minds across the transatlantic world. Today, the specific critical term has achieved a generic denotation, which can be applied to poetry of any nationality writing about any war, including,for instance, Homer's Iliad from around the 8th century BC, the Old English poem“The Battle of Maldon”, and the poetry of the American and the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraqi War, the so-called“Wars on Terror”,and even the annual remembrance of wars.

War Poetry in English, or English language war poetry, or war poetry written in the English language, which mainly consists of the Anglo-American war poetry, or“British and American war poetry,”is a characteristic portion of the whole body of English language war poetry. It has its origins from the Greeks and Romans, but historically begins together with the development of the English language over the course of more than 1,400 years, evolving as a distinct part of English-language literature, not only the literature of England but also that of Scotland, Wales, the Crown dependencies, and the whole of Ireland, as well as literature in English from countries of the former British Empire, including the United States and other English speaking countries. Taking war as its material and motif, war poets cherish humanity and happiness, long for love and peace, and explore in depths the larger questions of life,such as justice, liberty, identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty, courage, compassion, duty, desire,and death, responding to these larger questions as well as the relations of immediate personal experience to moments of national and international crisis. It has become an integrated part of the national and international mythology, an expression of historical consciousness, human identity and political conscience, and a legacy of humanity.