Victory: Thoughts and Poetry of Battle

by Jason M. Waltz, Alex Ness

Two poets consider war through poetry. One is former military, the other is a historian. Both recognize that war is a powerful theme of human event. Is it our right to go to war? What is the cost? Why do we do it, even if we fear the result?

110 pages, Paperback

Published July 20, 2019

About the author

I edited and published numerous heroic titles under Rogue Blades as both RBE, a micro publisher of heroic adventure fiction, and RBF, a nonprofit literary publisher of explorations of the heroic. If you enjoy hard-hitting, fast-paced tales of ringing steel and dark magics found in the battles of lore and myth, updated and written for the modern reader, you should check them out.

Personally, I also write heroic tales. Jason M (with and without that pesky period) are one and the same. Jason M Waltz enjoys sharing tales of heroes who are willing to step into the gap...sometimes to fill it, sometimes to make it wider.

Reviews

[Jason Waltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

poetry is difficult to rate; what works for some does not work for others; what moves one soul shatters another, smothers another, slips right past yet another. I was invited to this two-author collection to join Alex in expressing some thoughts on war in a bit of prose and some verse. He asked me to explore aspects of war beyond the obvious, to delve into emotions, impacts, and outcomes. I readily agreed, yet then struggled to fulfill my promise of half the contents: My words but close out the final 20%. It is not as easy as it may sound to work multiple poems of war from one's guts onto the page. Some of my works did flow easily, some began with a concept that I then struggled to put into understandable words, and some came slowly like molasses from a frozen spout. I hope, though, that the thoughts I put into images and ideas, shared a bit of otherness when looking at the many-aspected concept of 'war.'

The opening 30ish pages provide a huge historical view of war through the ages intertwined with Alex' emotional thoughts and reactions to the whole and several of its parts. if one tries to read it like a book it's challenging; read it like you're joining a conversation though, make it a dialogue rather than a monologue, and it becomes simpler to digest. my own essay is far shorter but, I think, at times no less troublesome, even opaque, in its attempts to be poetic. I read it now, almost a decade later and find it can read oddly.

poems by Alex that spoke to me:
"Germania Sorrows Us"
"Worthy of Rome"
"Broken Since You Left"
"Dreams of Elysium"
"A Letter Home"
"For Valhalla's Honor"
"A Harvest of Modern Sort"
"Only Courage"

A few of my own poems still spark my soul, even prompt a drop of moisture in the corner of an eye. But I'll not review/call out my own.

Overall an introspective look at the wars war can engender.