This article got my poetry hating teen son to look up and even appreciate some poems

[MSNative]

My son is not a poetry fan. But this article sparked very interesting discussion and even further investigation. Voluntary historical and literary research and analysis on a holiday weekend? Score!

 

 

"The Vietnam War may have reopened with special starkness the question of how to honor our fallen dead, but it is hardly a new problem in our history. As today’s disputes over the legacy of the Civil War and the Confederacy suggest, it has never been enough just to lament the sacrifice and carnage of our wars, whether successful or failed. We feel the need to honor the war dead but also to make distinctions among them, elevating those who served noble causes while passing judgment on their foes. This is not an exclusively American impulse. It has deep roots in the larger Western tradition of commemoration, and no era—certainly not our own—has managed to escape its complexities and paradoxes."

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-we-remember-on-memorial-day-1495725897#livefyre-toggle-SB10516264636526164763404583165271501777626