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Bomber County
In early June 1943, James Eric Swift, a pilot with 83 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, boarded his Lancaster bomber for a night raid on Münster and disappeared.
Aerial bombardment was to the Second World War what the trenches were to the a shocking and new form of warfare, wretched and unexpected, and carried out at a terrible scale of loss. Just as the trenches produced the most remarkable poetry of the First World War, so too did the bombing campaigns foster a haunting set of poems during the Second.
In researching the life of his grandfather, Daniel Swift became engrossed in the connections between air war and poetry. Ostensibly a narrative of the author's search for his lost grandfather through military and civilian archives and in interviews conducted in the Netherlands, Germany and England, Bomber County is also an examination of the relationship between the bombing campaigns of the Second World War and poetry, an investigation into the experience of bombing and being bombed, and a powerful reckoning with the morals and literature of a vanished moment.
Aerial bombardment was to the Second World War what the trenches were to the a shocking and new form of warfare, wretched and unexpected, and carried out at a terrible scale of loss. Just as the trenches produced the most remarkable poetry of the First World War, so too did the bombing campaigns foster a haunting set of poems during the Second.
In researching the life of his grandfather, Daniel Swift became engrossed in the connections between air war and poetry. Ostensibly a narrative of the author's search for his lost grandfather through military and civilian archives and in interviews conducted in the Netherlands, Germany and England, Bomber County is also an examination of the relationship between the bombing campaigns of the Second World War and poetry, an investigation into the experience of bombing and being bombed, and a powerful reckoning with the morals and literature of a vanished moment.
308 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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About the author
Daniel Swift
11 books14 followersDaniel Swift teaches at the New College of the Humanities in London. His first book, Bomber County, was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and his essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, the New Statesman, and Harper’s Magazine.
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October 14, 2011
I recently read Daniel Swift’s Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of WW2 on the strength of its title and, an interview I heard Swift give on the ABC (Sydney, Aust). I began reading this book with great enthusiasm but by the end I found myself feeling rather angry. I have three main issues with this book:
I find the title, Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of WW2 to be opportunistic, misleading to say the least and, in the extreme dishonest. Swift jumped on the name when he went to the 57 Sqn reunion at East Kirkby and obviously thought it would make a good title for his book. The book however, if you dissect it, has less to do with “Bomber County and lost airmen”. It is rather, a treatise on the poetry of WW2 and the morality of the bombing campaign. Swift of course is entitled to discuss these topics but he cloaks them in his grandfather’s story which, as I got further into the book seemed more an excuse for the book and, while it is craftily woven into the fabric of his narrative the focus is far from what the title promises.
The other thing I began to pick up on as I read was the overall tone of the work which I thought was subtly demeaning towards the airmen who served in Bomber Command and especially those who died.
He refers to the airmen as “bombers”, in a way that totally dehumanises them, as if they are like the machines in which they flew and are in some way inseparable from them. Then, on p.183 he says:
“He (my grandfather) was lost, neatly, at just the right time, and so I could tell the story of a hero: a pilot of the early bombing, justified and absent from the atrocities of later history. He was not in Hamburg or at Dresden….”
This demonises all those airmen who came after.
Swift got a lot of interesting stories from the veterans when he and his father first attended the 57 Sqn reunion. These are great stories when they surface through the book, stories about the day to day lives of these extraordinary men who flew out night after night, in the Lancasters. But, there is a disparaging undercurrent throughout. Quote:
“The old bombers wear blue blazers, with rows of medals on their left breast pocket…. Each time we ask, were you at Feltwell in 1941, and each time there is a pause before they answer, no. These are survivors, and they joined later, in ’43 and ’44 and so their
stories are of the last raids of the war, when Berlin was lit with fire.”
It was one of these veterans who paid for Swift to do the taxi run in Just Jane so he could experience what it was like to be inside a Lancaster but later, in the last paragraph of chapter six he says:
“I returned to the 57 Squadron reunion at East Kirkby……. I wanted to see the
bombers together again, and to see who my grandfather might have become, had he grown old…. As before, the women had fixed hair and brooches in the shape of Lancasters, and the men in blue blazers drank more. As before, my father and I looked around the room and thought, no, he wouldn’t have been like that at all.”
Considering that the stories from these men were some of the best parts of Swift’s book, to describe them in this way is, to say the least rather undignified. However, when Swift discusses the book or gives readings these stories are at the forefront not so much the poetry and especially not the morality issues.
The dissertation on poetry, which makes up the bulk of Swift’s work is ponderous in my view and far from effective (James Purdon, The Observer, Sunday 29 August 2010 notes this in his review). In terms of Swift’s discussion of the morality of the bombing campaign, a contentious issue to say the least, my problem here is not in the discussion of it but in the lack of balance when talking about the bombing in UK as against the bombing in Germany and the use of highly emotive references when discussing the latter quote:
“from 45,000 dead in Hamburg to Berlin in early February 1945…. and …. British and American planes burned down Dresden, killing 60,000″.
I was disappointed in this book. “Publish or perish!” I have since found that it was published in the US under the title Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot’s War which, given the nature of the book might have been a more appropriate title all round, though, “poetic license aside, none of the airfields Swift’s grandfather flew from were actually in Bomber County which is Lincolnshire. My uncle was one who gave his life in Bomber Command in 1945 and rather than think, “It takes a book like Bomber County to remind us of the sacrifice made by the airmen” it is as if someone has walked on his grave.
I find the title, Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of WW2 to be opportunistic, misleading to say the least and, in the extreme dishonest. Swift jumped on the name when he went to the 57 Sqn reunion at East Kirkby and obviously thought it would make a good title for his book. The book however, if you dissect it, has less to do with “Bomber County and lost airmen”. It is rather, a treatise on the poetry of WW2 and the morality of the bombing campaign. Swift of course is entitled to discuss these topics but he cloaks them in his grandfather’s story which, as I got further into the book seemed more an excuse for the book and, while it is craftily woven into the fabric of his narrative the focus is far from what the title promises.
The other thing I began to pick up on as I read was the overall tone of the work which I thought was subtly demeaning towards the airmen who served in Bomber Command and especially those who died.
He refers to the airmen as “bombers”, in a way that totally dehumanises them, as if they are like the machines in which they flew and are in some way inseparable from them. Then, on p.183 he says:
“He (my grandfather) was lost, neatly, at just the right time, and so I could tell the story of a hero: a pilot of the early bombing, justified and absent from the atrocities of later history. He was not in Hamburg or at Dresden….”
This demonises all those airmen who came after.
Swift got a lot of interesting stories from the veterans when he and his father first attended the 57 Sqn reunion. These are great stories when they surface through the book, stories about the day to day lives of these extraordinary men who flew out night after night, in the Lancasters. But, there is a disparaging undercurrent throughout. Quote:
“The old bombers wear blue blazers, with rows of medals on their left breast pocket…. Each time we ask, were you at Feltwell in 1941, and each time there is a pause before they answer, no. These are survivors, and they joined later, in ’43 and ’44 and so their
stories are of the last raids of the war, when Berlin was lit with fire.”
It was one of these veterans who paid for Swift to do the taxi run in Just Jane so he could experience what it was like to be inside a Lancaster but later, in the last paragraph of chapter six he says:
“I returned to the 57 Squadron reunion at East Kirkby……. I wanted to see the
bombers together again, and to see who my grandfather might have become, had he grown old…. As before, the women had fixed hair and brooches in the shape of Lancasters, and the men in blue blazers drank more. As before, my father and I looked around the room and thought, no, he wouldn’t have been like that at all.”
Considering that the stories from these men were some of the best parts of Swift’s book, to describe them in this way is, to say the least rather undignified. However, when Swift discusses the book or gives readings these stories are at the forefront not so much the poetry and especially not the morality issues.
The dissertation on poetry, which makes up the bulk of Swift’s work is ponderous in my view and far from effective (James Purdon, The Observer, Sunday 29 August 2010 notes this in his review). In terms of Swift’s discussion of the morality of the bombing campaign, a contentious issue to say the least, my problem here is not in the discussion of it but in the lack of balance when talking about the bombing in UK as against the bombing in Germany and the use of highly emotive references when discussing the latter quote:
“from 45,000 dead in Hamburg to Berlin in early February 1945…. and …. British and American planes burned down Dresden, killing 60,000″.
I was disappointed in this book. “Publish or perish!” I have since found that it was published in the US under the title Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot’s War which, given the nature of the book might have been a more appropriate title all round, though, “poetic license aside, none of the airfields Swift’s grandfather flew from were actually in Bomber County which is Lincolnshire. My uncle was one who gave his life in Bomber Command in 1945 and rather than think, “It takes a book like Bomber County to remind us of the sacrifice made by the airmen” it is as if someone has walked on his grave.
September 26, 2010
I have been reading books about war for several months now, probably to make up for never having personally had to be in one: Matterhorn, War, The Things They Carried, On Killing, The Winds of War, War Made Easy to name some reading this year. Bomber County is the latest entry into the war category and is unique in its effort to focus on bomber poetry. Daniel Swift tries to mix too many issues into one book. The author definitely deserves a heartfelt “Good try” for digging up a lot of information. I am glad that I read the book and it highlighted some new information for me and made me think. Maybe I just need to find the book that covers bombing in the 20th century. I think the story of Swift’s search for his grandfather could be plenty good by itself.
Bomber County is Lincolnshire in eastern England and is the location of dozens of RAF bomber airfields from World War II. It is closest to Holland and then to Germany. “Bomber County is where the bombers left from and where they came home to…”
This is an example of an oasis of storytelling in a book overloaded with too much analysis and too many tangents:
But then Swift abandons the story to tell us the mechanics of his research for this segment; this would have been better in a note at the end of the book, not in the midst of an action scene. Details about his research and his analysis of poems are woven into the entire book and distract from the story. Maybe an arrangement that separates the story and the research details and the analysis would have made the book more readable for me. As it was, I felt like I was often pulled from one thing to another.
The glue of the story is the author’s search for the details of his grandfather’s life and death in Western Europe at the age of 30 as a bomber pilot. The subtitle of the book, The Poetry of a Lost Pilot’s War, puts one aspect of the book front and center: a focus on war poetry. And Swift does write about well known poets as well as unknown poets who wrote poetry to tell the stories and feelings of war and the bombers. In the construction of the book he regularly returns to this focus in some detail but also has long sections that have no connection to poetry. In fact, his grandfather was not a poet. Swift spends a good deal of time analyzing the poetry but, for me, not in a very satisfying way. It seemed like he was saying, ‘See, look at it this way’ when I would have preferred to discover some connections myself. Please don’t spell every detail out for me, Mr. Swift.
There is some excellent consideration of the moral issues of saturation bombing like Dresden and Hamburg, thinking about it from the point of view of the bomber crews and history. Planes shot down by their own defenses and midair collisions are a reminder of the mean irony of war. “The bombers who fly and do not return threaten our need for stories because they thwart the possibility of an ending. The bombers who kill civilians in foreign cities threaten our demand for goodness in our heroes…” George Orwell is quoted: “War is by its nature barbarous, it is better to admit that.” Some of the moral issues are considered with the question of how far the author’s grandfather would go before reaching his personal moral limit.
Early in the bombing campaign in Europe, flying was by landmarks and targets were barely visible from 14,000 feet. Bombing was on clear nights, hopefully with a full moon. The stunning lack of accuracy at that stage was examined: only 20% of bombs fell within five miles of the target! Later in the campaign, radar and other navigation and aiming assistance improved accuracy. So initially it was civilians killed by accident and later it was civilians killed on purpose in spite of Geneva Convention wartime rules of discrimination and proportionality and the 1939 promise by the British government not to bomb civilian targets that would kill women and children. Life on the receiving end of bombing in London and Germany is described.
Daniel Swift reveres archives. “I began this book because I believe that archives are the cathedrals, holy houses where may be answered even the hardest human loss.” His research of records is stunning, assuming you are not too busy looking at the trees and miss the forest. He locates British records of bombs dropped in a specific city, date and time and compares that information with German records recording bomb hits at that same place and time. The number of back office people in a war is legion and the detail of the records they kept was surprising to me. (There was actually a medical post mortem examination of Swift’s grandfather after his body washed up on the Holland shore. There was a detailed procedure, even in wartime. He was buried in Holland and he was moved from one burial location to another. All duly recorded.) Swift found the name of the Nazi pilot (also deceased) who shot down his grandfather’s bomber! He tracked down the records in addition to many interviews and site visits in England, Germany and Holland. He was thorough.
I do not know much about what is required for a doctorial thesis, but this book might qualify as such a thesis with the addition of footnotes. There is a bibliography. The thesis to be illuminated is “Bombing was to the Second World War what the trenches were to the First: a shocking and new form of warfare, wretched and unexpected, and carried out at a terrible scale of loss. Just as the trenches produced the most remarkable poetry of the First World War, so too did the bombing campaigns foster a haunting set of poems during the Second.” Since I have never evaluated a doctorial thesis, I cannot say if this one would be accepted. But I think it needs more work for readability and clarity.
There surely could have been more editing and organizing. One goal of the author is to uncover ‘the hidden tradition of bombing poets…” I don’t think he succeeds but certainly he found some poetry written by bombers that has been preserved in his beloved archives. But couldn’t we say that any group of people includes some who write poetry? Seems obvious. No need to write a book to prove that! Collect some of the poetry, add some commentary and make that a book. There is so much talk surrounding the bits and pieces of poems that Swift does include, the poems are hidden or only a few lines. Overall, I think he tries to cover too much territory, saying a bit about so many related (and tangential) topics. Did I mention the summaries of several 1940s war movies that he included?
Now I will be interested to see what other people think about this month old book that is on the to-read list of relatively few people. I wonder if all of them got the email from Barnes & Noble about this book. I gave it three stars because it did cover several topics that especially interested me, especially the moral issues of bombing. There were some places where I didn’t want to put the book down and there were other places where I could hardly hold the book up.
Bomber County is Lincolnshire in eastern England and is the location of dozens of RAF bomber airfields from World War II. It is closest to Holland and then to Germany. “Bomber County is where the bombers left from and where they came home to…”
This is an example of an oasis of storytelling in a book overloaded with too much analysis and too many tangents:
There were clouds this evening in Bomber County, and at 1800 the meteorological station at Mildenhall, north-east of Cambridge, recorded a temperature of 73 degrees and a firm southerly breeze. The squadron log notes: ‘Conditions on take-off anything but ideal,’ but at twenty-two minutes past eleven Lancaster [bomber] 5686 lifts up, third in the stream.
Along the runway, the Lancaster leans to port, and my grandfather counters in a push upon the throttle; a last shaking, a shrug of metal upon rubber, rubber upon tarmac, and up at ninety-five miles per hour. At 500 feet he raises the flaps and the nose pulls down. The take-off rhythm rattles out and smoothes now. They are climbing at close to 150 miles per hour, and he clicks off the fuel booster pumps. The cloud is thick with other planes so this must be precise and now the plane is smaller for a moment, one among the crowd. Inside the plane are one 4,000 lb bomb and eight bundles of incendiaries, each a dozen skinny sticks. The big raid tonight is on Dusseldorf, with 783 planes, but they had flown out forty minutes before. My grandfather’s plane is one of seventy-two on Munster and they gather just north of Southwold, on the English coast, at half past midnight, and turn south-east.
. . . at nineteen minutes past one and 15,000 feet a Messerschmitt prowls past a Halifax from my grandfather’s bomber group; rear and mid-upper gunners shoot back and the German plane sheers off. Just to their north, twelve minutes later, another night-fighter is seen and vanishes . . .
But then Swift abandons the story to tell us the mechanics of his research for this segment; this would have been better in a note at the end of the book, not in the midst of an action scene. Details about his research and his analysis of poems are woven into the entire book and distract from the story. Maybe an arrangement that separates the story and the research details and the analysis would have made the book more readable for me. As it was, I felt like I was often pulled from one thing to another.
The glue of the story is the author’s search for the details of his grandfather’s life and death in Western Europe at the age of 30 as a bomber pilot. The subtitle of the book, The Poetry of a Lost Pilot’s War, puts one aspect of the book front and center: a focus on war poetry. And Swift does write about well known poets as well as unknown poets who wrote poetry to tell the stories and feelings of war and the bombers. In the construction of the book he regularly returns to this focus in some detail but also has long sections that have no connection to poetry. In fact, his grandfather was not a poet. Swift spends a good deal of time analyzing the poetry but, for me, not in a very satisfying way. It seemed like he was saying, ‘See, look at it this way’ when I would have preferred to discover some connections myself. Please don’t spell every detail out for me, Mr. Swift.
There is some excellent consideration of the moral issues of saturation bombing like Dresden and Hamburg, thinking about it from the point of view of the bomber crews and history. Planes shot down by their own defenses and midair collisions are a reminder of the mean irony of war. “The bombers who fly and do not return threaten our need for stories because they thwart the possibility of an ending. The bombers who kill civilians in foreign cities threaten our demand for goodness in our heroes…” George Orwell is quoted: “War is by its nature barbarous, it is better to admit that.” Some of the moral issues are considered with the question of how far the author’s grandfather would go before reaching his personal moral limit.
Early in the bombing campaign in Europe, flying was by landmarks and targets were barely visible from 14,000 feet. Bombing was on clear nights, hopefully with a full moon. The stunning lack of accuracy at that stage was examined: only 20% of bombs fell within five miles of the target! Later in the campaign, radar and other navigation and aiming assistance improved accuracy. So initially it was civilians killed by accident and later it was civilians killed on purpose in spite of Geneva Convention wartime rules of discrimination and proportionality and the 1939 promise by the British government not to bomb civilian targets that would kill women and children. Life on the receiving end of bombing in London and Germany is described.
Daniel Swift reveres archives. “I began this book because I believe that archives are the cathedrals, holy houses where may be answered even the hardest human loss.” His research of records is stunning, assuming you are not too busy looking at the trees and miss the forest. He locates British records of bombs dropped in a specific city, date and time and compares that information with German records recording bomb hits at that same place and time. The number of back office people in a war is legion and the detail of the records they kept was surprising to me. (There was actually a medical post mortem examination of Swift’s grandfather after his body washed up on the Holland shore. There was a detailed procedure, even in wartime. He was buried in Holland and he was moved from one burial location to another. All duly recorded.) Swift found the name of the Nazi pilot (also deceased) who shot down his grandfather’s bomber! He tracked down the records in addition to many interviews and site visits in England, Germany and Holland. He was thorough.
I do not know much about what is required for a doctorial thesis, but this book might qualify as such a thesis with the addition of footnotes. There is a bibliography. The thesis to be illuminated is “Bombing was to the Second World War what the trenches were to the First: a shocking and new form of warfare, wretched and unexpected, and carried out at a terrible scale of loss. Just as the trenches produced the most remarkable poetry of the First World War, so too did the bombing campaigns foster a haunting set of poems during the Second.” Since I have never evaluated a doctorial thesis, I cannot say if this one would be accepted. But I think it needs more work for readability and clarity.
There surely could have been more editing and organizing. One goal of the author is to uncover ‘the hidden tradition of bombing poets…” I don’t think he succeeds but certainly he found some poetry written by bombers that has been preserved in his beloved archives. But couldn’t we say that any group of people includes some who write poetry? Seems obvious. No need to write a book to prove that! Collect some of the poetry, add some commentary and make that a book. There is so much talk surrounding the bits and pieces of poems that Swift does include, the poems are hidden or only a few lines. Overall, I think he tries to cover too much territory, saying a bit about so many related (and tangential) topics. Did I mention the summaries of several 1940s war movies that he included?
Now I will be interested to see what other people think about this month old book that is on the to-read list of relatively few people. I wonder if all of them got the email from Barnes & Noble about this book. I gave it three stars because it did cover several topics that especially interested me, especially the moral issues of bombing. There were some places where I didn’t want to put the book down and there were other places where I could hardly hold the book up.
October 21, 2010
Daniel Swift is a Professor of English at Skidmore College in upstate New York. He is British, and a graduate of Oxford. He is in his early 30s.
His book has two central goals - to discover the life of his father's father, a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II,who died during a mission over Germany in 1943, and to review the quality of the poetry written during World War II. Mr. Swift mentions early on that WW2 is not thought of as having produced the quality of poetry that was written during WW1.
Often accompanied by his father, who lost his father when he was four, Mr. Swift, through frequent travels to areas associated with his grandfather's service in the RAF, and together with impressive, prodigious research, presents us with not only a biography of his grandfather, but also a fairly thorough, if concise, review of the war years and their effect on both England and Germany. He interweaves short biographies of key literary figures of the era - Stephen Spender, Randall Jarrell, TS Eliot, James Dickey, Virginia Woolf - with glimpses of the history both macro, as it would appear in contemporary and recent accounts of the period, and micro, as revealed in interviews Mr. Swift conducted with a number of people he met while researching his book. Particularly trenchant are interviews with people who served at the time the author's grandfather was in the RAF.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in World War II, poetry written as responses and reflections to either observation or direct experience of war, and of the effect on British and German people on the "home front."
His book has two central goals - to discover the life of his father's father, a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II,who died during a mission over Germany in 1943, and to review the quality of the poetry written during World War II. Mr. Swift mentions early on that WW2 is not thought of as having produced the quality of poetry that was written during WW1.
Often accompanied by his father, who lost his father when he was four, Mr. Swift, through frequent travels to areas associated with his grandfather's service in the RAF, and together with impressive, prodigious research, presents us with not only a biography of his grandfather, but also a fairly thorough, if concise, review of the war years and their effect on both England and Germany. He interweaves short biographies of key literary figures of the era - Stephen Spender, Randall Jarrell, TS Eliot, James Dickey, Virginia Woolf - with glimpses of the history both macro, as it would appear in contemporary and recent accounts of the period, and micro, as revealed in interviews Mr. Swift conducted with a number of people he met while researching his book. Particularly trenchant are interviews with people who served at the time the author's grandfather was in the RAF.
All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in World War II, poetry written as responses and reflections to either observation or direct experience of war, and of the effect on British and German people on the "home front."
November 9, 2018
Easily deserves five stars though quite understand that others will disagree.
The author's paternal grandfather - James Eric Swift- a Lancaster bomber pilot with 83 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, took part on a bombing raid over Munster in June 1943. He went missing, his body was later recovered from the North Sea, and he was buried in The Netherlands with full military honours. He was married with two young children.
The author describes his travels with his father , around the Lincolnshire airfields, and to Germany and to The Netherlands to learn about his grandfather's death. . Fascinating tale in its own right.....but the book merges the family research with a background material about the RAF bombing raids over Germany along with cultural history. World War 2 poetry is used as a significant reference point. In fact the author stresses that 'The Iliad' was the first war poetry. Films and plays about World War 2 somehow get drawn into the text and examines to get a whole wider view of RAF pilots.
Some readers will want either the family research trail or RAF history or perhaps the literature . Not everyone wants to have the three subjects fused together in the same book. But its a book that I want to read again immediately and also treat as a reference book.
The author's paternal grandfather - James Eric Swift- a Lancaster bomber pilot with 83 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, took part on a bombing raid over Munster in June 1943. He went missing, his body was later recovered from the North Sea, and he was buried in The Netherlands with full military honours. He was married with two young children.
The author describes his travels with his father , around the Lincolnshire airfields, and to Germany and to The Netherlands to learn about his grandfather's death. . Fascinating tale in its own right.....but the book merges the family research with a background material about the RAF bombing raids over Germany along with cultural history. World War 2 poetry is used as a significant reference point. In fact the author stresses that 'The Iliad' was the first war poetry. Films and plays about World War 2 somehow get drawn into the text and examines to get a whole wider view of RAF pilots.
Some readers will want either the family research trail or RAF history or perhaps the literature . Not everyone wants to have the three subjects fused together in the same book. But its a book that I want to read again immediately and also treat as a reference book.
January 22, 2026
En español se llama Poesía en guerra
En realidad se llama Bomber County (Condado Bombarderos, en referencia al Condado de Lincolnshire, desde donde salían los bombarderos ingleses hacia Alemania). La idea original no es mala, hablar de forma intercalada de la poesía y la guerra, a traves de la memoria de su abuelo y los poetas de guerra, pero se cae hacia la mitad. Se vuelve repetitivo, y parece darle la razón a Robert Graves: "No cabe esperar ninguna poesía de guerra de la Real Fuerza Aérea"
La verdad no me tramo.
En realidad se llama Bomber County (Condado Bombarderos, en referencia al Condado de Lincolnshire, desde donde salían los bombarderos ingleses hacia Alemania). La idea original no es mala, hablar de forma intercalada de la poesía y la guerra, a traves de la memoria de su abuelo y los poetas de guerra, pero se cae hacia la mitad. Se vuelve repetitivo, y parece darle la razón a Robert Graves: "No cabe esperar ninguna poesía de guerra de la Real Fuerza Aérea"
La verdad no me tramo.
September 12, 2019
Unusual take on WWII history. Daniel Swift explores his bomber pilot grandfather's death. This family history journey leads to discussion of the bomber war and the flyers' experiences, but much more it is a literary journey - looking at poets of the time and their response to the bombing war - as flyers, ground crew, as civilians affected by the Blitz or reflecting on the damage done by the RAF.
January 29, 2022
A lot of good information about the men who flew the bombers for England in World War II . I don’t have a great interest in poetry but if you do, & also are interested in this area of history, this is the book for you.
October 11, 2010
The literature of World War II has seen countless books covering just about every aspect of war imaginable, though few, if any, explore the poetry of air bombing. Using as his starting point a visit to his grandfather's grave and uncovering the man's story through documents, interviews, and histories, including W. G. Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction, Swift succeeds in combining memoir, history, literary criticism, and biography--no easy matter. "I think I wanted to tell a story, and [my grandfather] was available" he writes, and he nimbly juggles the two very different parallel story lines. Although the story could have gotten away from him, Swift explains away the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of his grandfather's life and death with the poetry of annihilation. Swift writes well and with great insight, and the poetry becomes a lens through which he views the war's more complicated and poignant legacy. This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
February 22, 2012
When I was in high school, I really loved the war poets of WWI (despite being a completely unpoetic soul). Daniel Swift looks at the poetry of WWII and the bombers in particular as well as the story of his grandfather who died on a bombing mission in June 1943. I didn't find the poetry that interesting, and according to Swift, it isn't really that great. What was interesting is the public view about the bombing and the bombers. During WWI, people died at the front. During WWII, civilians died from bombing (e.g. the blitz, Dresden) in addition to soldiers on the various fronts. The bombing had two purposes - bombing specific facilities that aided the war, and dampening the morale of the citizens. So the bombers were never really regarded as heroes. I loved the story of Swift's grandfather. I didn't always feel like all the pieces hung together but Swift is a really terrific writer.
April 27, 2018
excellent
I finished BOMBER COUNTY: THE POETRY OF A LOST PILOT'S WAR by Daniel Swift a few days ago. Swift recounts his search for closure on the death of his grandfather, the pilot of an RAF Lancaster that went down over the Dutch north coast in the summer of 1943. Sebald, Jarrell, Ciardi, & James Dickey are referenced as well as the popular culture, accounts of the devastation of Hamburg & Dresden, and the history of the RAF Bomber Command
Some of you may appreciate it. Swift has also written on Ezra Pound & Saint Elizabeth's (The Bughouse). My wife is reading that one now. I get it next.
I finished BOMBER COUNTY: THE POETRY OF A LOST PILOT'S WAR by Daniel Swift a few days ago. Swift recounts his search for closure on the death of his grandfather, the pilot of an RAF Lancaster that went down over the Dutch north coast in the summer of 1943. Sebald, Jarrell, Ciardi, & James Dickey are referenced as well as the popular culture, accounts of the devastation of Hamburg & Dresden, and the history of the RAF Bomber Command
Some of you may appreciate it. Swift has also written on Ezra Pound & Saint Elizabeth's (The Bughouse). My wife is reading that one now. I get it next.
November 8, 2010
A great book which looks closely at the experiences of being a pilot in Bomber Command in WW11. The book charts the author's search for his grandfather's life history during this period to his death off the coast of Holland following a night raid over Germany. A fascinating story linking poetry to events to highlight what it may have felt like to be a bomber pilot at that time. Not always an easy read but nevertheless enjoyable. Well worth setting time aside to glimpse life from a very differnt, unique and remarkable historical perpective.
January 4, 2011
It's very odd to watch the author grappling with the imaginative significance of the bomber, with the poetry of the heavy bomber, and to see him having so much difficulty with it. To me it's fierce and clear, and it's his thoughts and conclusions that seem ghostly by comparison, slipping out of my fingers without making sense. Having said that, it was fascinating to watch him make the attempt. It made me think things I hadn't thought before. And the poetry itself, and the story of his grandfather are quietly haunting.
March 29, 2011
i loved this book. swift uses personal narrative, interspersed with bomber pilot poetry and critical evaluations to deftly examine how the pilots of WWII served in such a different capacity than soldiers in previous wars or than soldiers in their own war. using literature and verse to discuss issues of historical and military importance? a beautiful, creative way to challenge the ideas of war poetry and art. simply a lovely book.
August 13, 2016
Obviously inspired by W.G. Sebald, so much so that I am reluctant to be too effusive. Posits that bombing was to the Second World War as trench warfare was to the First, and explores why we think the "great" poets were those of the Great War. I thought Swift was best in his explications of actual poems and poets's lives (especially Randall Jarrell, Eliot, Auden), while the "search" for his grandfather read as overly crafted and strangely flat.
October 27, 2016
Grandson Researches Death of his Grandfather in WWII
The author's quest to find out exactly how his Bomber Pilot, Grandfather killed while on a bombing mission to Germany as neared his quota of combat missions.
The facts of his death are tied to poets & poetry of the air war in WWII. Interesting book but includes some not so great poetry.
The author's quest to find out exactly how his Bomber Pilot, Grandfather killed while on a bombing mission to Germany as neared his quota of combat missions.
The facts of his death are tied to poets & poetry of the air war in WWII. Interesting book but includes some not so great poetry.
July 16, 2011
Patchy. Bombing and poetry. Kind of a stretch. He's looking to mate The Great War and Modern Memory with Rings of Saturn. Doesn't really work. But some good passages. He's got another, better book in him somewhere. This seems a little forced.
December 9, 2011
A moving, original look at the lost airman of world war 2, analysing the poetry & ethics of bombing, whilst the author also traces the details surrounding his own grandfather’s death - a refreshing view on the aerial combat of war, beautifully written.
Want to read
January 24, 2012On page 16
October 23, 2012
Surprisingly moving tale told in a very unusual way.
February 6, 2014
Not my cup of tea. Too dense for this ol' retiree.
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