The children of a nation
Boys and men
Stood side by side
Searching not war but adventure
Wanting to see not death, but foreign lands
Their blood later shed on those foreign soils
Their bodies laid to rest in unfamiliar lands
Boys, untouched by horror
Quickly hardened by war
Men who rose from the trenches
To face a wall of gunfire
Never flinching
They asked for little but gave all
Forging not stories but legends
The fire of Australia begun with a spark
The spark lit by the Anzacs
Mates to all and to each other
Proving themselves not only to Australia
But to the world
To all Anzacs
Past, present and future
Well done and good luck
Sleep now knowing your duty and sacrifice
And the fallen Anzacs
Who are not gone
Merely marching far away

so theres my poem about the ANZACs.

(06-03-2012, 12:26 AM)way2epic4me Wrote:  The children of a nation
Boys and men
Stood side by side
Searching not war but adventure (not for war)
Wanting to see not death, but foreign lands (this negative way of saying things gets old quickly for me)
Their blood later shed on those foreign soils
Their bodies laid to rest in unfamiliar lands
Boys, untouched by horror
Quickly hardened by war
Men who rose from the trenches
To face a wall of gunfire (walls of gunfire)
Never flinching
They asked for little but gave all
Forging not stories but legends
The fire of Australia begun with a spark
The spark lit by the Anzacs
Mates to all and to each other
Proving themselves not only to Australia
But to the world
To all Anzacs
Past, present and future
Well done and good luck
Sleep now knowing your duty and sacrifice
And the fallen Anzacs
Who are not gone
Merely marching far away

so theres my poem about the ANZACs.

I think speaking in this negative way " Forging not stories but legends" weakens the poem; robs it of power. I do like the allusion to it's origins at Gallipoli. I have seen a few poems on his topic, and none have ever covered that, but treated it as mainly a soldiers of foreign war day, much like our memorial day here in the States.

Dale

Can I just say, that writing about these things seems to demand a very high level of skill, to match the mixture of bravery, sadness, and poignancy of the events themselves. I do not say you have failed, just that the bar is set very high, not least because the War Poets of the Great War made such a mark.

I might be inclined to cut it down a little.

i think the poem speaks of how many soldiers the world over enter the fray. because the poem's about the anzacs, it should have something and a lot of it, specifically about them. for instance, in the uk, the red beret denotes the parachute regiment. first in last out i think the royal infantry,though i could be wrong. what were their famous conflicts, losses and wins. we all know of Gallipoli; what was the average age, the average age of those who signed up and their life expectancy. if we use specifics in our titles then it should carry through. at present the poem is a bit too generic to match the title. i will say that the scope for great poetry on such subjects is great indeed. i love the sentiment of it and think if you decide to edit that part should be kept, (even though it's a generic for all fighting men)

thanks for the read.

my biggest comment would be the distance that seems to exist between the speaker and the topic. the piece strikes me as being too general for a sense of investment in what is being described. there is intention to be invested, I think, but the emotion just never hit me, and I think it's a poem where the emotion needs to hit me. it got closer in the second half, with the explicit mentioning of the Anzacs. The poem needs more of that to separate it from a crowded topic