Task 1: We slept with our Boots on

Hey all,
  
Firstly, a brief introduction of the poet, Steve Carlsen. Surprisingly, he actually wrote his poems, including this poem, pretty recently, just a few years back to be exact. Apparently, from the sources on the web,apart from exeriencing the US army's tough training regime, he experienced combat operations first-hand when he was sent to Afghanistan to fight. He was encouraged by his then-professor (or he might still be, as this source was written quite a while ago and hence I am unable to determine whether he is still under the guidance of this professor) Dr Michael Collins to share his experiences by writing about them.

Basically, Steve Carlsen is writing about the struggles of hapless soldiers that are sent to fight by their respective countries. He expresses this through various means in the poem. He talks about the "hell" these soldiers have to go through when they are on duty for their country, sharing about what they were required to do when they were fighting such as the arduous journey they had to put up with, giving us a better understanding of how soldiers' lives are like during war. Also, like many other war poets, he also describes the devastation war causes, the first few sentences of his poem already depicting a scene full of gore and violence.

I will be sharing my view and analysis of the poem in the second part of this post later.Look out for the next post. Tata