Spender and Sankichi Two Views of Disaster

Stephen Spender's "Epilogue to a Human Drama" and Toge Sankichi's "Dying" are poems detailing the destruction of two cities, London and Hiroshima, respectively, during or after World War II bombings. Spender wrote "Epilogue to a Human Drama," hereafter referred to as "Epilogue," after a December air raid of London during the Battle of Britain, which ravaged and razed much of England from Summer 1940 until Spring 1941. Sankichi wrote "Dying" from his vivid recollections of the surprise …

…Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998, 29-31. Spender, Stephen. "Epilogue to a Human Drama." Collected Poems. New York: Random House, 1955, 134-135. Spender, Stephen. World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Weatherhead, A.K. "Stephen Spender: Lyric Impulse and Will." Comtemporary Literature. Vol. 12, No. 4. N.p.: Regents of the University of Wisconsin, 1971, 451-465. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Carolyn Riley. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1973, 323.