VOICES IN WARTIME

By RUSSELL SCOTT SMITH

VOICES IN WARTIME
WRITING a poem is the best way to express the strange mix of euphoria, terror and fear that soldiers feel during war.

That's a fascinating idea, especially when it comes from the mouth of someone who should know: Lt. Gen. William J. Lennox, the superintendent of West Point.

He's just one of the scholars, poets and soldiers quoted in "Voices in Wartime," a moving documentary about poetry inspired by combat.

Walt Whitman's Civil War poems are covered, and there's a particularly touching section on the World War I British soldier-poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

But the bulk of the documentary focuses on the Iraqi conflict, particularly a series of recent protests organized by a group called Poets Against the War.

Conservatives might see this pacifist turn halfway through the movie as a bait-and-switch game - but it also comes organically from the subject, since there's no mistaking the anti-war sentiment of most war poetry.

Running time: 74 minutes. Not rated (graphic images of combat). At the Landmark Sunshine, New Metro Twin.

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http://www.nypost.com/movies/42294.htm

It ran in the printed paper on Page 72