"The Battle" by Louis Simpson

Simpson served with a glider-infantry regiment of the 101st Airborne Division in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany. In combat he was a runner. He carried messages. In Holland he was wounded by a shell, and at Bastogne his feet were frost-bitten; but he survived. After the War, however, he had a nervous breakdown and was taken into hospital suffering from amnesia. The War was blacked out in his mind, as were episodes in his life before the War. When he was discharged from hospital, he found that he could hardly read or write. In a contributor's note to an anthology, Simpson say:

Before the war I had written a few poems and some prose. Now I found that poetry was the only kind of writing in which I could express my thoughts. Through poems, I could release [end of page 566] the irrational, grotesque images I had accumulated during the war; and imposing order on those images enabled me to recover my identity. In 1948, when I was living in Paris, one night I dreamed that I was lying on the bank of a canal, under machine-gun and mortar fire. The next morning I wrote it out in the poem 'Carentan O Carentan', and as I wrote I realized that it wasn't a dream, but the memory of my first time under fire.

—Jon Stallworthy, "The Fury and the Mire," The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry, ed. Tim Kendall (Oxford: OUP, 2007): 566–67.

Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

August 31, 2012

Reading Response 3

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Text.

Works Cited

Book

Article

Rawida Komkai

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

September 6, 2011

Reading Response 3

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Links

Poem Texts

"The Battle," The Owner of the House: New and Collected Poems, 1940–2001 (2003)

Criticism

Robert McDowell, "A Sky Lit with Artillery: The Poems of Louis Simpson," The Hudson Review 42.1 (1989 review)
Mary Karr, "Collected Poems by Louis Simpson; On Louis Simpson: Depths beyond Happiness by Louis Simpson, Hank Lazer," Harvard Book Review 11/12 (1989 review)
John Bensko, "Reflexive Narration in Contemporary American Poetry: Some Examples from Mark Strand, John Ashbery, Norman Dubie and Louis Simpson," The Journal of Narrative Technique 16.2 (1986)

World War II

Introduction, The World at War: History of WW 1939–1945
Face of Battle, The War
World War Two, BBC
World War II Records, National Archives
The Battle of the Bulge

Battle of the Bulge 70th Anniversary, The National WWII Museum
Battle of the Bulge, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Overview of the Battle, United States Army
Introduction: Battle of the Bulge, American Experience

Media		Louis Simpson Reading Five War Poems (6:58 min.; "The Battle" is from beginning to 1:07)
		Poet Louis Simpson reads from The Owner of the House, Griffin Poetry Prize (2004; 6:33 min.)
		Battle of the Bulge, American Experience (1994; 1 h. 8:57 min.)
		Battle of the Bulge, History Channel (42:41 min.)
		The Battle of the Bulge, Battlefield Detectives (2005; 44:53 min.)

Louis Simpson

Louis Simpson, Academy of American Poets
Marcus Williamson, "Louis Simpson: Acclaimed Poet, Critic and Translator," The Independent (2012)
Lawrence R. Smith, "A Conversation with Louis Simpson," Chicago Review 27.1 (1975)
John Drury and Mark Irwin, "An Interview with Louis Simpson," Iowa Journal of Literary Studies 3 (1981)
Micheal O'Siadhail, "An Interview with Louis Simpson," The Poetry Ireland Review 29 (1990)
Louis Simpson Recalls the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Homecoming (audio clip; 2:23 min.)

Simpson, Louis. "The Battle." The Owner of the House: New and Collected Poems, 1940–2001. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2003. 114. American Poets Continuum 78.