Basic Trope: A warrior who applies poetry, philosophy, and/or Art to combat.
- Straight: Bob is a war veteran who writes an epic poem based on his experiences in war.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is a Dance Battler who, in the midst of battle, sings a beautiful and mournful elegy to each enemy he kills.
- Bob is Odin in disguise.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is a Cultured Warrior, but doesn't actively pursue the arts.
- Bob is a poet who is conscripted into war and draws artistic inspiration from his circumstances, but considers battle unworthy of memorization beyond unsparing anti-war and anti-military screeds.
- Justified:
- Bob needs to cope with war somehow, so he uses expression to help himself along.
- Bob comes from a martial arts fraternity or religious order that teaches its members to be Warrior Poets.
- Bob is a tribal bard. Being a Warrior Poet is his job.
- Bob was an intellectual before the war and naturally good at poetry. Now that he is a soldier he writes poems about war.
- Bob is a battle-mage who casts spells with poetry.
- Bob enlists because he believes he cannot be a good poet without seeing the sufferings of life.
- Bob is a Proud Warrior Race Guy. Every aspect of his culture involves warfare, including poetry.
- Inverted: Bob is an artist by day and a brutal, psychopathic serial killer by night. The latter is inspiration for the former.
- Subverted: Bob writes an epic contemplative poem based on his experiences in war but it turns out he's a Miles Gloriosus.
- Double Subverted: But when the Miles Gloriosus is thrust into a combat situation, he ends up doing well and writing an even better poem.
- Parodied:
- Bob uses his experiences in war to write childish nursery rhymes.
- Bob is a literal Warrior Poet, defeating his foes by stupefying them with his Epic Rap-Battle skills.
- Zig Zagged: Bob aspires to this trope, but as he witnesses horrific things he flip-flops over whether such behaviour is a glorification of war, or whether it's a necessity to retain one's own humanity.
- Averted: A movie takes place in a time and place where warrior poets are a traditional trope (ancient China, ancient Japan, the Crusades, Sparta, etc.) but the main characters are unthinking soldiers who fight without wondering why they do.
- Enforced: The Framing Device is of such a character Bringing News Back to tell his comrades' heroic story.
- Lampshaded: "Oh no, is Bob ever going to stop quoting Homer whenever we go into battle?"
- Invoked: Bob is a scholar of samurai literature, and when he's thrust into war he tries to apply this trope to his life to keep himself sane.
- Exploited: "The prisoner is never gonna talk this way. Lets tie him up and make him listen to Bob. If that doesn't work, nothing will!"
- Defied: Bob is a Cultured Badass, but as far as he's concerned, once battle starts the artistic aesthete side of him stays in the tent. When he picks up his sword he turns into a brutal Combat Pragmatist and Screaming Warrior.
- Discussed: "Those Space Elves are probably composing sonnets on the beauty of springtime right now, while we prepare for battle. Pussies."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: War turns Bob into a savage or traumatizes him, which crushes any poetic tendencies he might have.
- Reconstructed: War turns Bob into a Shellshocked Veteran but this only fuels his desire to express his views on combat through art and poetry.
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