Six writers and editors on poems of war.

In honor of National Poetry Month, Slate asked a handful of writers and editors to name a poem they turned to in a time of war. By the time we had gathered their responses, the second Gulf War was mostly over, but the poems' immediacy remains, as does much of the confusion caused by combat. As Robert Pinsky reminds us in his commentary on Thomas Hardy, poetry continues to embody feelings that are usually only half-articulated. Here are the selected poems, each accompanied by commentary and an audio file. (Click on the links to hear the readings.)

Robert Pinskyon "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations,' " by Thomas Hardy

Sometimes poetry simply embodies in memorable form what many of us half-consciously feel. For example, people on all sides of the war in Iraq, and people of many different opinions about the war, all shared a deep wish that it be over. And maybe not only over, but somehow more than over—subsumed or gotten over by the normal, relatively decent rhythms of life and death.

That wishful thinking is enlarged in Thomas Hardy's poem "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations.' " The title draws from the Biblical book of Jeremiah, and the poem was written in the dark year 1915. It is in three very brief parts:

Listen to Robert Pinsky reading this poem.

In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

                      I

Only a man harrowing clods
             In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
             Half asleep as they stalk.

                    II

Only thin smoke without flame
            From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
            Though Dynasties pass.