The opening lines of Shakespeare's sonnet on the destructive power of sexual desire are equally potent as a description of the emotions aroused by warfare. Poets are the best witnesses to the dark connection between violence and the erotic, the link between sexual desire and military aggression. Initially justified by perjured claims about weapons of mass destruction, the campaign in Iraq has indeed been murderous, bloody, and full of blame. Yet the poems that have begun to emerge from the conflict--in e-mail messages, blogs, and increasingly in print--are remarkable for their reluctance to comment broadly on politics or ideology. Instead of pointing a finger of blame at a dishonest and incompetent administration, many of today's soldier-poets emphasize the waste of war by focusing on the particular and the personal, often by invoking the erotic.