Marinetti: Oh, What a Futurist War

Jori Finkel... Marinetti: Oh, What a Futurist War (New York Times, August 27, 2006). "...Few men in the history of adrenaline have been as excited by the sights and sounds of war as F. T. Marinetti. He celebrated war as the 'the world’s only hygiene,' he made machine guns a subject of his poetry, and he exploded the traditional form of the printed poem to reflect his pumped-up, down-with-the-old attitude.
One of his most explosive poems is 'Après la Marne, Joffre Visita le Front en Auto' from 1915. While the title refers to a French general’s visit by car to the front after the Battle of the Marne, in which his troops kept the Germans at bay during World War I, the poem simulates the energy and cacophony of the battlefield."