Monday, August 16, 2010

Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" in the Contemporary Context


I've been writing an essay about war poetry, but I've expanded to consider poetry that illuminates the conditions of "Pure War"--that state in which the constant preparation for war is the real war. Dylan's 1960s song is an attack on the conditions in which we still live. The video is not for the faint of heart, and is brutal in its indictment of the previous administration. I'm not a fan of pictures of bloody and maimed children. But the fact of the matter is that the same things continue under the current administration, so it's not really reducible to Republicans versus Democrats. We're all implicated.

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