Voices in Wartime

A provocative if heavy-handed documentary about the relationship between poetry and war, Rick King's film does an excellent job of conveying how some veterans use the literary art to cope with haunting memories. Several decades after concluding his service, for instance, Vietnam vet David Connolly still employs jarhead jargon to write poetry that explodes with vehemence. Elsewhere, a West Point literature professor gushes over various works without questioning the sinister mechanisms that gave rise to them; he reminds us that our country's leaders have few qualms about ushering civilians through war's one-way door.