In this compelling book about poets who wrote during the Spanish Civil War and World War II-Auden, Stevens, Moore, Vallejo, Queneau, and Stein-Rachel Galvin explores how these noncombatant writers earned, demonstrated, and anchored their authority for writing about war. With her astute analysis of wartime poetry's self-reflexivity, self-interruptions, and self-understanding, Galvin has written a richly insightful book that ranges across national and linguistic lines,
and that illuminates both the historical contexts and the formal nuances of the poems. Everyone interested in poetry's relation to the violent realities of the twentieth century will benefit from this valuable book.
Rachel Galvin is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is a scholar, poet, and translator. Her essays appear in Boston Review, Comparative Literature Studies, ELH, Jacket 2, Los Angeles Review of Books, MLN, and Modernism/modernity.