Pantoum for a Veteran of the Great War

“Pantoum for a Veteran of the Great War” is a poem (a pantoum) crafted from quotes from First World War British servicemen taken from interviews housed in the Imperial War Museum archives and used in the 2018 documentary film, “They Shall Not Grow Old,” directed and produced by Peter Jackson. The pantoum also draws on content from a November 11, 2018 National Public Radio broadcast on the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, which featured a recording of Fenton Caldwell, a World War 1 U.S pilot, describing what the Armistice meant to him. “I Never Talked About it After the War” is a villanelle about the author’s uncle, a Korean War veteran whose POW status and valor as a U.S. Army sergeant in U.N. Special Forces during the war were unknown until after he died.