Poems of Peace and War

Written in the crucible of 1917, these poems capture a world at war with itself and a poet still refusing to surrender hope. Elizabeth H. Connor writes from inside the Great War, her verses swinging between defiant patriotism and raw grief, between the mechanical horror of modern warfare and the tender green persistence of spring. These are poems that ache for unity amid national fractures, that find prayer in the pattern of birds in flight, that insist on beauty even as the trenches swallow a generation. Connor uses vivid, almost desperate imagery to press her faith forward: that humanity might yet find its way to peace, that the violence is not the final word. The collection pulses with the urgency of someone writing by lamplight while shells fall somewhere distant, praying the words might matter. For readers who want poetry that wrestles honestly with what it costs to hope when everything is burning, this collection offers a window into one woman's emotional response to the 20th century's defining catastrophe.