Tongue of War

Poetry. This book won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by B. H. Fairchild, who writes in his foreword, "TONGUE OF WAR is one of the most distinctive manuscripts I have ever judged for a book prize (And it is a book rather than simply a collection)." Barnstone writes that he intends TONGUE OF WAR as "a love letter to the World War II generation." But he explains, "I see the sequence as a history in verse in which I allow the readers to inhabit multiple and warring perspectives...
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Poetry. This book won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by B. H. Fairchild, who writes in his foreword, "TONGUE OF WAR is one of the most distinctive manuscripts I have ever judged for a book prize (And it is a book rather than simply a collection)." Barnstone writes that he intends TONGUE OF WAR as "a love letter to the World War II generation." But he explains, "I see the sequence as a history in verse in which I allow the readers to inhabit multiple and warring perspectives on the War in the Pacific, including the Pearl Harbor attack, Hiroshima, and the conflict in between." Pulitzer-prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler writes that "Barnstone has revealed humankind's capacity both for evil and for redemption with a power that few writers have ever achieved."