POETREE

I find that wartime rhetoric tends to be a goldmine of metaphor and repetitious phrasing, and often lends itself to exploration by poetry. As Dunya Mikahil said in The War Works Hard, wartime "awards medals to generals / and themes to poets."

Here is a great example of baseball in a poem (note: pdf file) used as a metaphor for war in WWI, which was popular to euphemize war and appeal to young men for enlistment.

There is also the consistent visual and written metaphor of the dove as a peace symbol and the eagle or hawk as a war symbol throughout propaganda, poetry, and prose about war.

Finally: let's never forget the significance of flags not only as literal symbols of nationalism and patriotism, but also as metaphors in song and poetry. Flags come to actually represent the country itself, with all of those ideals wrapped neatly within. I am reminded of the significance of flags in the moving song Hero of War, which you can listen to/read lyrics to here (TW: pretty graphic description of human rights abuses and combat in warfare).