American Football (Harold Pinter)
American Football is an anti-war poem published in 1991 by British author Harold Pinter .
content
In the poem the lyric self celebrates that it has finished off its opponent. It asks to honor God and to celebrate that one has defeated the opponent.
background
Pinter wrote the poem in August 1991 on a flight to the Edinburgh Festival . The poem is a reaction from Pinter to the second Gulf War . He first offered it to various larger newspapers for publication, but they rejected it due to the vulgar language, which is why Pinter published it in the small magazine Bomb . In Great Britain he published it in the Socialist newspaper and in the Netherlands in the Handelsblad newspaper . With the poem, Pinter wanted to draw attention to the discrepancy between the reality of war and the perception and handling of war in the United States .
criticism
When Pinter was named Knight of the Legion of Honor , the French politician Dominique de Villepin named the poem as one of the most accurate images of the war, since the poem, with its violence and cruelty, is one of the best metaphors for the temptation of imperialism.
Web links
- Poetry text in English, Italian and Dutch
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b American football. Accessed June 2, 2016 .
- ↑ Luke O Neil: Revisit Harold Pinter's Powerful Ant War Poen 'American Football'. November 25, 2015, accessed June 2, 2016 .
- ↑ Harold Pinter's poem "American Football" ("A Reflection Upon The Gulf War") - An Impersonation Of An American Gulf War Soldier's Destiny. September 10, 2014, accessed June 2, 2016 .
- ↑ Harold Pinter's Anti-War Poetry: A Critique of War. (PDF; 270 kB) Accessed June 2, 2016 (English).