“It is not possible to distinguish between a music fi le obtained from a licensed, legal source (e.g., original CD) and the same music fi le obtained illegally (e.g., through fi le sharing).”

The RIAA’s other charge, that the BU students were distributing copyrighted mu-sic simply by making the fi les available online, has met with different responses in differ-ent courts. But Bestavros and Reyzin worry about the implica-tions of prosecuting people for “making available” copyrighted material. After all, Reyzin noted at a recent BU panel discus-sion on digital copyright, “the main purpose of a computer is to copy and move information from place to place.”

Reyzin and Bestavros are also critical of federal legisla-tion supported by the RIAA that would push universities to insti-tute either subscription-based music services or more aggres-sive fi ltering of P2P traffi c on their networks or risk losing federal fi nancial aid funding. As of this writing, that legis-lation has passed the House and is being considered by a Senate committee.

Not only do such mandates require a huge investment in technology and personnel, Bestavros says, but deputiz -ing school administrators as copyright enforcers puts a uni-versity in “a weird position” — policing rather than educating its students.

The bottom line, Bestavros argues, is that the industry can’t enforce its way out of its piracy predicament. Con-tinued attempts to do so will spur the development of new fi le-sharing networks and new means to encrypt and cloak network user identity, leading to an Internet “arms race” with plenty of collateral damage — falsely accused stu- dents, improperly fi ltered on-line communication, wasted resources, and stifl ed innova-tion — but no solution to il-legal downloads. To truly end music fi le sharing that way, Bestavros says, “you’re going to have to cut the wire.”

POETS FROM Homer to Whitman to

Bob Dylan have found a power-

ful subject in war. Poetry has

comforted, condemned, praised,

and mourned, articulating the

contradictions of war’s brutality

and nobility. And poets do more

than help us make sense of past

confl icts, as James Winn, a College

of Arts and Sciences professor of

English, argues in his new book,

The Poetry of War (Cambridge

University Press). Reading great

poetry, he writes, can act as an

antidote to “the mindless sim-

plifi cations of war propaganda,”

making us wiser judges of present

battles. As violence rages today

in Iraq, Sudan, and Gaza, poetry

gives us a language to describe

and transcend the horror.

What can poetry tell us about

war that news accounts or

history books cannot?

For journalists, and even for his-

torians, war is a contest. One side

wins, the other loses; the balance

of power in some part of the world

may change as a result. But poetry

is an ideal form for expressing

ambiguity, and thus for describing

the heroism of the vanquished,

the intolerable cost of so-called

victory, and above all, the complex

and contradictory feelings of all

those touched by war.

You organize your book themati-

cally, with sections on honor,

shame, empire, chivalry, com-

radeship, and liberty. How do

those themes help us understand

the poets’ experience of war?

Well, all of those themes recur in

different cultures and languages,

and at different times, and while

I always want to respect the par-

ticularity of those circumstances,

I’ve also learned a lot by setting

what Homer says about shame

next to poems of shame from the

Vietnam era, or by thinking about

the way eighteenth-century poets

created the myth of liberty that

politicians still invoke today, even

though the politicians have no

idea where the ideas they are

using originated.

As their world recedes from our

own, ancient poets are some-

times perceived as triumphalists

or spinners of highly glossed

adventure yarns. And yet, as you

say, Homer tells some “terrible

truths” about the horrors of the

battlefi eld.

It would be a gross misreading

to call Homer a triumphalist. His

sympathy for the losers is strong

and clear, and among the terrible

truths he expresses is the empti-

ness of victory. As his original

hearers knew, the victorious Greek

general Agamemnon would come

home to fi nd his wife living with

another man and would promptly

be murdered by her. Virgil is a

more complex case. He was writ-

ing at the request of the emperor

Augustus, and his poem praises

the Romans as a people destined

to rule the world. At the same time,

however, Virgil’s poem is deeply

sensitive to the cost of empire, the

loss of freedom that comes with

conquest.

Talk about how wartime poets

evoke beauty from violent and

bloody scenes.

For poets in many periods, war

was a prime instance of the

sublime, an experience bring-

ing together awe, terror, power,

and reverence on a grand scale.

When Yeats writes of the “terrible

44 BOSTONIA SUMMER 2008

A Terrible BeautyJAMES WINN LOOKS AT THE POETRY OF WAR, FROM HOMER TO SPRINGSTEEN BY BARI WALSH

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beauty” of the Easter Rising of

1916, he may be thinking of the

way the English put down the revo-

lution by indiscriminately shelling

the center of Dublin, starting fi res

that burned much of the city. In ac-

knowledging the beauty inherent

in fi re and destruction, Yeats par-

ticipates in a long tradition stretch-

ing back to Homer. Eighteenth-

century poets, convinced that “good

wars” could advance the inevitable

progress of mankind toward free-

dom, democracy, and brotherhood,

often connected the magnifi cence

of warfare to the supposed nobility

of its aims. Their words helped

create the idea of a “war to end

all wars.”

Soldiers returning for their second

and third tours of duty in Iraq

often say they owe it to their bud-

dies to go back. What do poems

have to say about the bonds that

soldiers form?

As ideas that once provided moti-

vation for soldiers — honor, glory,

and even liberty — lose their force,

comradeship continues to be a

very powerful motive for com-

bat. Societies that are other wise

deeply homophobic, terrifi ed

of close relationships between

men, treat the close bonds formed

by combatants quite differently,

not only tolerating but actually

encouraging those bonds. Some

of the most touching poems I

found in the course of my re-

search express those feelings. Let

me quote just one stanza, from

a poem written by Robert Graves

to his friend and fellow offi cer

Siegfried Sassoon:

Show me the two so closely bound

As we, by the wet bond of blood,

By friendship blossoming from mud,

By Death: we faced him, and we found

Beauty in Death,

In dead men, breath.

By calling the force that binds

the two men “the wet bond of

blood,” Graves bravely acknowl-

edges the softer aspects of his

feelings for Sassoon. A friendship

blossoming from mud suggests

the conventional motif of the

fl ower that springs from a grave,

but it also allows the two males

a metaphorical fertility. All of this

rich imagery, however, is a prelude

to the revelation of the true bond-

ing force: Death. By staring Death

in the face, Graves claims, the two

men found beauty. From the dead

men all around them, they drew

breath.

What is your favorite poem in

this genre, and why?

An unfair question, especially unfair

to ask someone who read thousands

of war poems in preparing to write

this book. It also asks me to com-

pare apples and oranges. The great

ancient poems on war are huge,

sweeping epics, with the power

that comes from narrative. More

recent poems are shorter, more

intense. Randall Jarrell’s “The Death

of the Ball-Turret Gunner,” perhaps

the greatest poem to emerge from

World War II, is only fi ve lines long.

I love it, and I love the Iliad, and I

love “Born in the U.S.A.” But you’ll

appreciate my reluctance to choose

among works so different in size

and scope.

As you immersed yourself in this

poetry, did your own feelings

about war change?

Of course. Like many people in

my generation, my most immedi-

ate experience with war was the

war in Vietnam. Although I was

lucky enough not to go there, I

did get drafted in 1968 and found

my time in the Army pointless and

frustrating. So it was instructive

to read poems by soldiers who

genuinely believed in the right -

ness of the wars they were fi ght-

ing. I remain deeply skeptical of

war as a means of bringing about

change, but I respect the deter -

mination and heroism of soldier-

poets from many eras, and I have

tried, in my book, to honor their

memory. ■

45SUMMER 2008 BOSTONIA

*web extra

WATCH A VIDEO OF JAMES WINN

DISCUSSING THREE WAR POEMS AT

WWW.BU.EDU/BOSTONIA.

For poets, war brings together “awe, terror, power, and reverence.” — James Winn

PH

OTO

BY

KA

LMA

N Z

AB

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Y

James Winn, a CAS

professor of English, says

poetry can help us make

sense of war’s brutality

and nobility.

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