essay on war poets

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There is more to war poetry than mud, wire and slaughter

Poems about the first world war have defined the genre for decades. It is time to hear from new voices that reflect a wider view of conflicts

W hen we say “war poetry” today, the sort of writing that comes to mind is a conglomeration of Wilfred Owen , Siegfried Sassoon and the other great writers of the first world war. It means descriptions of mud, wire and slaughter on a horrific scale. It includes accusations that the top brass prolonged hostilities for no good reason and that people at home supported the cause in ignorance. It involves fierce protest as well as intense sympathy. It issues a warning.

Because poetry of this sort has been drip-fed into British schools for several generations (interestingly, the process did not start as soon as the war ended, but only began in earnest during the 1960s), it has settled in the public mind at an extraordinary depth. There are large benefits, of course. The best poetry of the first world war is exceptionally powerful – not just the lyrics of Owen and others, but the more complex and modernistic narrative of In Parenthesis by David Jones (which still has some claim to be considered a neglected masterpiece). Furthermore, by rubbing its readers’ noses in the brutal facts of conflict and suffering, it possibly creates a social value as well – by helping to educate people in the human cost of war, and in the process discouraging them from starting or supporting another one.

At the same time, maybe there are disadvantages. Perhaps by placing such an emphasis on war poetry in the school curriculum, we don’t actually put people off the idea of fighting, but inculcate the idea that it is somehow normal for the British to take up arms? Perhaps it solidifies the idea of us as a war-like nation? There is a literary consequence to the classroom focus too. By concentrating on the poetry of one conflict, which to an important extent is shaped by its particular circumstances, it directs attention away from the poetry of other wars.

Not just the poetry of other wars, in fact, but other kinds of war poetry. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” says the dead soldier encountered in Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “I parried; but my hands were loath and cold”. This summarises the whole circumstance of first world war poetry: it often involved hand-to-hand fighting; it was intimate. The second world war, by contrast, was for many soldiers a more distanced affair. Keith Douglas when taking aim in his poem “How to Kill”, says: “Now in my dial of glass appears / the soldier who is going to die”. He still thinks of him as a fellow creature (the soldier “moves about in ways / his mother knows, habits of his”) but also feels a crucial separation – a gap that exists as a physical space, and proves the conflict has frozen or exterminated a part of the speaker’s own humanity.

The difference between these two poems is shorthand for the differences between two periods and two kinds of war poetry. It is also an opportunity to point out that while the Owen poem has been read by millions of schoolchildren in the last 50-odd years, the Douglas poem (which is just as good, if not better) has been read by a handful. By not conforming to the pattern of war poetry laid down between 1914 and 1918 (actually between about 1916 and 1918), it has been sidelined.

The point here is not to discredit poetry of the first world war. As a collective act of witness, made at an extraordinary level of technical skill and with equally extraordinary emotional power, it is in its terrible way magnificent. The point, rather, is to say that our definition of “war poetry” has become too narrow to be accurate or fair. By extending it we are not only able to make a large literary gain – by admiring a much wider range of expertise, thoughtfulness and compassion – but also to appreciate in even more varied and detailed ways the effects of war.

This applies to the first world war itself, if we look away from the frontline and move to the home-front poetry of men in uniform such as Edward Thomas , or women waiting for them such as Eleanor Farjeon . Or to the extraordinary reports by nurses and other volunteers such as Helen Mackay, May Wedderburn Cannan and Margaret Postgate Cole . Or to the visceral and proto-existentialist poems and songs and chants of “Anonymous” (“I don’t want a bayonet up my arsehole, / I don’t want my bollocks shot away”).

A glance across the landscape of war poetry written after 1918 gives an even more dramatic sense of variety. The frontline (in north Africa, then France) brilliantly evoked by Douglas – in his poetry as well as his memoir Alamein to Zem Zem – is just a part of the large picture in which also appears Alun Lewis writing about soldierly boredom and nervous waiting during the second world war, and Dylan Thomas writing about the blitz – and, around them, international voices speaking with and through and over them: Nelly Sachs , Paul Celan , Anna Akhmatova and Tadeusz Różewicz .

As we come towards the present day, our sense of dilation becomes even greater. Not just in the sense that poets have made far-flung wars visible at home ( Yusef Komunyakaa writing about Vietnam, for instance, or Brian Turner about Iraq), but also because the reporting of wars in the media has encouraged non-combatants to address the subject in greater numbers than ever before. This is a difficult business, since it is all too easy to get caught grandstanding, or parading sensitivities, or seeming to aggrandise oneself by associating with a grand subject. But when it is done well it produces poems that earn the right to sit besides those written by people in uniform: Tony Harrison ’s “A Cold Coming” , for example, or James Fenton ’s “Dead Soldiers”.

Before the first world war, war poetry since time immemorial ( The Iliad ) had been largely concerned to celebrate, commend, remember and, yes, grieve. Think of Lord Byron ’s Assyrian, coming down like a wolf on the fold, or Sir John Moore in Charles Wolfe’s poem about the battle of Corunna . Since 1918, like war itself, the poetry of conflict has become a thing of infinite variety, describing apparently infinite tragedy. Yet for all this – which deserves more acknowledgment than it gets – something has stayed the same. The something Owen meant when he spoke about “the pity”.

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8.4: The War Poets

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Learning Objectives

• Understand the effects of World War I on Britain and on the development of Modern literature.
• Recognize the cognitive dissonance caused by accounts of the achievements and victories of the British military and the firsthand accounts of returning individuals and of writers such as the war poets.

No words could describe the general public’s perception of World War I better than the photo essay at the  Modern American Poetry  website (Editors: Cary Nelson and Bartholomew Brinkman. Department of English. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). In the photo essay note the first pictures of men going off to war, women cheering them on, both sides confident in their abilities and confident that the war would be over within a few months followed by increasingly somber pictures of the reality. The ad pictured here capitalized on the widespread belief that British troops, because they were honorable, chivalrous, gallant, would soon march home in victory. The work of soldier poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke informed the British public of the realities of war as much as, perhaps more than, the censored journalistic reports that reached British newspapers and magazines. The brutalities of outdated military tactics used against modern weapons resulted in incomparable  British losses . The war poets painted vivid pictures of the realities of war.

The BBC provides  extensive information about World War I , including virtual tours of the trenches and excerpts from oral histories, diaries, and letters.

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)

Wilfred Owen  was born in Shropshire, a rural area of England. He was interested in poetry, particularly Keats and other Romantic poets, and wrote poetry in his teens. When he failed to be admitted to college, he moved to France to work as an English language tutor. After World War I began, he moved back to England to enlist. In 1917, he was diagnosed with what was then called  shell shock  and sent to Craiglockhart Hospital in Scotland for treatment. There he met Siegfried Sassoon. Both poets wrote some of their most well-known poetry while there.  Owen  returned to the front in the fall of 1918, won the Military Cross, and just days before the war ended was killed in battle. His family received the news of his death in the midst of celebrations on November 11, Armistice Day, 1918.

“Dulce et Decorum Est”

The Latin phrase from a work by Homer may be translated “It is sweet and right to die for one’s country.” Juxtaposed against the illusion of war as a glorious adventure, Owen paints the horrors of war’s reality.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori .

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)

Rupert Brooke  also was fond of the works of the Romantic poets. He attended Cambridge University where he met and befriended members of the Bloomsbury Group whose literature was an important piece of British modernism.  Brooke  was commissioned into the Royal Navy, but in 1915 he died of sepsis onboard a hospital ship. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

Rupert Brooke’s grave.

“The Soldier”

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)

Although Sassoon grew up in a family divided by religious differences, his father was Jewish, his mother Roman Catholic, his background provided him enough wealth to live comfortably. He attended Cambridge University for a while, without taking a degree, preferring to live the life of a country gentlemen playing cricket and writing. Sassoon joined the British Army at the beginning of World War I; he was sent home from the front twice, once when he contracted a fever and once for shell shock, this being the occasion when he met Wilfred Owen. Sassoon survived World War I and continued writing until his death.

By George Charles Beresford, 1915

“Glory of Women”

Glory of women.

You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,

Or wounded in a mentionable place.

You worship decorations; you believe

That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.

You make us shells. You listen with delight,

By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.

You crown our distant ardours while we fight,

And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed.

You can’t believe that British troops “retire”

When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run,

Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood.

_O German mother dreaming by the fire,

While you are knitting socks to send your son

His face is trodden deeper in the mud._

In the last three lines, the speaker turns from addressing the people back home in England to speak to the imagined mother of a German soldier. His comment has the effect of humanizing the political enemy.

Key Takeaways

• The staggering casualties and the horrors of modern warfare contributed to the modernist sense that the world lacks a stable, centralizing force and that life lacks ultimate purpose—that the world we live in is, in the words of Thomas Hardy’s character Tess, a “blighted one.”
• The work of the war poets helped enlighten the public about the nature of the war experience.
• In “Dulce Et Decorum Est” the last stanza is directed to people back at home. What is the purpose of this stanza?
• Read this  brief description  of the mustard gas used in World War I. Does Owen’s description seem realistic? Which account seems more emotionally based? Which might have had a more profound effect on the people at home away from the war?
• Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” seems brighter in mood and tone than the other two poems, and yet it describes a soldier’s death. What makes the poem less horrific than “Dulce Et Decorum Est”?
• How would you describe the mood of the speaker in “The Soldier”?
• The speaker of “Glory of Women” expresses disillusionment with the supposed glory of war. How would you describe his attitude toward the women back at home?
• In “Glory of Women,” although the Germans are the enemy of the British, what common human trait does the poet reveal?

General Information

• Anthem for Doomed Youth: Writers and Literature of The Great War, 1914–1918.  An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• The First World War Poetry Digital Archive . University of Oxford and JISC [Joint Information Systems Committee]. text (including biographies, primary texts, background information), images (including portraits, digital images of manuscripts, photos of World War I, images from the Imperial War Museum); audio; video (including a  Second Life Virtual Simulation  from the Imperial War Museum and a  YouTube video introduction , over 150 video clips, film clips), and an interactive timeline.
• “ Home Front: World War One .” British History. BBC.
• “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Wilfred Owen’s ‘ Dulce et Decorum Est .’” Online Gallery. British Library. image of handwritten manuscript and information about Owen and World War I.
• “ World War One .” World Wars.  BBC History .
• Poems by Wilfred Owen with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon . A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication. Pennsylvania State University.
• “ Rupert Brooke, 1887–1915 .” “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) .” Historic Figures. BBC.
• “ Rupert Chawner Brooke .” An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• “ Siegfried Sassoon .” An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• “ Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) .” Historic Figures. BBC.
• “ Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) .” Historic Figures. BBC.
• “ Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) .” “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Wilfred Edward Salter Owen .” An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
• “ 1914 V. The Soldier “ by Rupert Brooke.  Representative Poetry Online . Ian Lancashire, Department of English, University of Toronto. University of Toronto Libraries.
• “ Anthem for Doomed Youth .” by Wilfred Owen. An Exhibit Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice, November 11, 1918. Robert S. Means. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. text and a digital image of the original handwritten manuscript.
• “ Dulce et Decorum Est .” by Wilfred Owen . Paul Halsall, Fordham University.  Internet Modern History Sourcebook .
• “ Dulce et Decorum Est .” by Wilfred Owen. “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Glory of Women .” by Siegfred Sassoon.  Counter-Attack and Other Poems . 1918.  Bartleby.com .
• “ Glory of Women .”  The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon .  Project Gutenberg .
• “ Sonnet V. The Soldier .” by Rupert Brooke. “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Wilfred Owen’s ‘ Dulce et Decorum Est .’” Online Gallery. British Library.
• “ World War I Photo Essay .”  Modern American Poetry . Editors: Cary Nelson and Bartholomew Brinkman. Department of English. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• “ Dulce et Decorum Est .” by Wilfred Owen.  LibriVox .
• Extract from a letter by Wilfred Owen, July 1918 . “ —the rest is silence.” Lost Poets of the Great War .” Harry Rusche, Emory University.
• “ Siegfried Sassoon 1886–1967 ). A Recording Owned by Mrs. Olga Ironside Wood. 1 January 1967. BBC.
• “ The Soldier .” by Rupert Brooke.  LibriVox .
• “ Wilfred Owen Audio Gallery .” Dominic Hibberd. World Wars.  BBC History .

Owen Sheers: war poetry

Monday 8 September 2014 | by Owen Sheers

Owen Sheers reflects on war poetry in this thought piece

‘A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war’

In his 1952 poem ‘The Shield of Achilles’, Auden describes Achilles’ mother, Thetis, looking over the shoulder of Hephaestus as he forges her son a shield. She does so anticipating scenes of honour, celebration and prestige: ‘vines and olive trees’; ‘ritual pieties’; ‘athletes at their games’. But instead the blacksmith God, informed with all the terrible knowledge of Auden’s twentieth century, is busy embossing the shield with scenes of war and its aftermath. ‘An artificial wilderness/ And a sky like lead’; ‘decent folk’ watching an execution; a voice proving ‘by statistics that some cause was just’; a wandering urchin ‘who’d never heard/ Of any world where promises were kept,/ Or one could weep because another wept.’ Confronted with these unflinching depictions of what war really is and means, Thetis cries out in dismay as Hephaestus, his job done, ‘hobbles away.’

For much of human history war poetry, which from a 21st Century perspective we might expect to have always have been on the side of the truth-telling Hephaestus, has more often than not contributed to a public narrative closer to Thetis’ anticipated scenes of honour and glory. Until recently poets wrote about war not because poetry was particularly well-suited to exposing and giving voice to its realities (although it is – more on that later), but rather because war was well-suited to poetry. Sacrifice, heroism, drama, loss, virtue, amputated love – for centuries wars and the men who fought them have presented poets with a fertile landscape in which to cultivate their craft. In doing so, writing narrative, elegiac or heroic verse at a temporal or physical distance from the battlefield, poets have tended to fuel the climate in which wars are cultivated rather than evoke the truth of conflict or challenge its over-simplified narratives. Dulce et decorum est, wrote Horace, pro patria mori – It is sweet and right to die for one’s country. 2000 years later, in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, Tennyson might have lamented the blunder that sent ‘the noble six hundred’ into the valley of death, but to what extent does the poem actually move on from Horace’s statement? To what extent does it bring to life what it was like to have ridden into that futile carnage of cannonballs and shot? Were all six hundred of the Light Brigade truly noble? The wounds, the stench, the screams. The individual human stories of hope, fear, hate. All of what it was like for those men is smothered by a blanket of retrospective grandeur, Tennyson’s poetry investing the horror with a safely tragic mythic weight rather than any resonant human detail that might have punctured the propaganda of the day with lyrical authenticity.

Even the poetry that provoked the quote to which this essay is a response, the work of Rupert Brooke, failed to get close to sounding a true note of the war in which he died. A voice might have become audible, as Churchill said, but it was an old voice, not a new or a truthful one; a continuation of the centuries-old tradition of poetry being put to the service of war’s bland romantic narratives. Had he survived the infected mosquito bite from which he died and witnessed the bitter, cruel fighting of WWI, I’m sure Brooke would have come to use his poetry to try and sound such a note. As it was, however, he didn’t, so the sounding of that true note was left to others – the WWI poets we now know so well, Wilfred Owen (who famously re-occupied Horace’s statement for the common soldier), Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, David Jones, Issac Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney.

It was in the poems by these men, all of whom fought in the trenches, that British poetry finally took up the role of Auden’s Hephaestus in relation to conflict, deploying its unique literary qualities to speak truth to power and give voice to the full spectrum of the realities of soldiering. In doing so - in writing from war rather than about war – the WWI poets revealed poetry to be a stunningly effective form through which to unflinchingly render the multifaceted experience of conflict. ‘In war,’ Aeschylus wrote, ‘truth is the first casualty.’ The poets of WWI proved poetry could help keep that casualty breathing. Because they did, the nature of the poetry they wrote has since become a benchmark for what we ask from, and consider to be, the best of contemporary war poetry.

So why were these poems so successful? For two reasons, I think. Firstly, because of the qualities of poetry itself, a literary form that deals in the specific, the arresting image, and yet in which the specific is simultaneously made to resonant in the universal. A form in which the moment, in all its intimacy and context, is not just made to live, but to live on. A poem (I’ll assume we’re talking about good poetry here and follow the line of the WWII poet Keith Douglas who said there is no such thing as bad poetry, just poetry and not poetry) is both immediate and enduring, gaining special purchase in the memory through its calling upon every shade of our communicative selves – the intellectual, the emotional, the associative, the visual, the rhythmic and the musical. ‘Poetry’, as John Berger once wrote, ‘draws windows everywhere.’

In contrast, public discourses about war tend to close windows everywhere. Stories become simplified, brushstrokes become broad, alternative perspectives silenced. Amnesia and misplaced patriotism combine in a lethal cocktail to kill hundreds of thousands. Poetry is an antidote to this. A vital and vitalizing remembering through all five of our senses; a counter-tide against the distancing language of government and the military-industrial complex. Where a news report might talk of a ‘surgical strike’, a poem, working at the leading edge of language, can bring us inside the breathing, panicking, loving and hating body of the person trapped in the bombed building’s rubble, and do so with an immediacy and depth impossible to achieve in journalism, film or, I’d argue, a novel. Where the lexicon of war defuses language, poetry charges it.

But poetry has always had these qualities. So why the sudden sea-change with WWI? Because, quite simply, the poets were there and their poems were read. In the trenches the poet became the soldier and the soldier became the poet. They wrote from what they lived and saw, not from an inherited idea of war or from reported experience. And then, having been written, those poems were read. Not always immediately, but still relatively soon, and in time by a large and engaged readership.

In the years since the end of WWI we’ve seen a gradual reduction in such conflict poetry of immediate proximity reaching a wide audience. There were many excellent soldier poets in WWII who continued the tradition, and combatant poets on both sides of the conflict in Vietnam. But as, through the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, global conflicts have increasingly been fought either by professional armies or marginalized, disposed groups, so the sources of poetry written by those who’ve experienced conflict and its aftermath have drastically reduced. Similarly, the vast majority of civilians affected by conflict tend not to have access to the means to either write their experiences as poetry, or to distribute their work if they do. Lastly, we the readers, no longer go in search of these voices.

In response to this situation the last decade has seen a noticeable increase in war poetry written by poets working from primary sources – from interviews with or testimonials by those who have experienced war first hand. Such a poetry of personal testimony, with the poet becoming a conduit for another’s voice over their own, is crucial if we are to ensure that the stories of contemporary conflict are allowed to continue flowing with any vibrancy into the poetic bloodstream. But it is not enough. Poets’ access is often limited to their own cultural sphere, leading to a constriction of voices along national lines that war poetry already has a tendency to encourage. So the question and challenge facing us today is how can we make sure that a poetry of proximity, a poetry of witness that represents all of those involved, is still written from the frontlines of today’s wars? How can we give an effective poetic voice to the experience of the women Kurdish militia fighting against ISIS? The Syrian child refugee? How can we continue to marry the worst of manmade human experience with what I still believe to be the best of manmade human expression? How can we, to put it simply, keep creating poems that tell us what it is really like, while also making us think, feel, and never forget?

I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I do know we must try. Because if we don’t, then the conversation around war and its aftermath will become, by however small a degree, less articulate, less representative, the notes it sounds less true, and a world in which we continue to solve our disputes through violence, more likely.

Owen Sheers, September 2014

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Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 and brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales. He was educated at ...

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Poetry and the War(s)

Michael S. Begnal teaches writing at Ball State University. His essay on the World War I poetry of the Spectra group was published recently (2018). A poet as well as a scholar, his latest collections are The Muddy Banks (2016) and Future Blues (2012).

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Michael S Begnal, Poetry and the War(s), American Literary History , Volume 31, Issue 3, Fall 2019, Pages 540–549, https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajz022

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Three new critical monographs remind us that, when it comes to war, poets have always been political. In their respective recent volumes, Tim Dayton, Rachel Galvin, and Adam Gilbert are concerned with the ways in which poets respond not only to war itself but also the ideology and propaganda that supports it, how their work resists or sometimes replicates these scripts, and the strategies they use to construct the poetic authority to address it. These critical texts, read together, reveal that resistance to hegemonic narratives is more complicated than simply writing an antiwar poem, that subverting the narratives of war requires some knowledge of how their sociopolitical and economic algorithms function to begin with. Dayton’s study offers a model of resistance to such narratives through its revealing juxtaposition of anachronistic or propagandistic poetic rhetoric with the true nature of and motives for the US’ participation in World War I. Galvin argues for the sociopolitical validity of the work of canonical modernist poets more recently disparaged as overly absorbed in aesthetic concerns. For Gilbert, poetry is an overlooked reservoir of knowledge bearing witness to the experience of US soldiers in the American War in Vietnam.

A recent essay by poet laureate Tracy K. Smith contends that, through the 1990s, American poetry was gripped by a “firm admonition to avoid composing political poems,” but with the shock of 9/11 and the ensuing war in Iraq, “something shifted in the nation’s psyche” that sparked a renewed flowering of socially engaged political poetry. Three new critical monographs remind us, however, that, at least when it comes to war, poets have always been political. In their respective volumes, Tim Dayton, Rachel Galvin, and Adam Gilbert are concerned with the ways in which poets respond not only to war itself but also the ideology and propaganda that supports it, how their work resists or sometimes replicates these scripts, and the strategies they use to construct the poetic authority to address it. Just as Smith suggests that contemporary political poetry can be “a means of owning up to the complexity of our problems, of accepting the likelihood that even we the righteous might be implicated by or complicit in some facet of the very wrongs we decry,” so do these critical texts, read together, reveal that resistance to hegemonic narratives is more complicated than simply writing an antiwar poem, that subverting the narratives of war requires some knowledge of how their sociopolitical and economic algorithms (so to speak) function to begin with.

Dayton’s American Poetry and the First World War (2018) is unique among the works considered here in that it looks at that war and the poetry it inspired through a Marxist-materialist lens. This confers a number of advantages, one being that it provides a model for contrasting the real reasons behind the US’ entry into the war with the jingoistic discourses perpetuated in its favor that the poets whom Dayton examines (mostly) amplified. Much has been written about the disillusionment that the war engendered among high modernists like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, among others, and Paul Fussell’s argument in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975)—that World War I introduces ironic disjuncture as the primary trope of literary modernism—still looms large (Fussell 38). Dayton’s aim is to examine how the poets often served Woodrow Wilson’s “audacious attempt to establish the United States as the hegemonic power of the capitalist world system” (15). Dayton’s clarity about the wider purpose of the war, “a contest over which nation would succeed the United Kingdom as the hegemonic capitalist power, the US or Germany,” needs to be made prominent because so much of the rhetoric, both in the popular press and in the poetry he studies here, helped to obscure the underlying economic reasons for the war, instead invoking an anachronistic millennialism or the ideology of a medievalist crusader (67).

Dayton spends much of his first chapter putting distance between his historical-materialist approach (his theoretical foundation is Marx’s base/superstructure model, as modified by Sean Creaven to include a third level, the substructure) and that of scholars like Mark Van Wienen, Cary Nelson, Walter Kalaidjian, and others, who have in recent decades championed the work of political poets formerly excluded from the modernist canon. Dayton terms these critics “left neo-pragmatists” and points out that “none of them operate from within a classical Marxist framework, despite their leftist commitment” (29). Though he presumably shares this political commitment, Dayton is particularly trenchant about Van Wienen’s Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War (1997). While acknowledging its value as a recovery project, Dayton criticizes this 20-year-old text for being content to do “cultural work,” which, he asserts, “threatens to devolve into a gross instrumentalism if it becomes a total program, rather than a way of understanding an aspect of literary (or other) works” and which, being itself “a hallmark of capitalist modernity, is something that Marxist critics as different as Georg Lukács and T. W. Adorno have fought against within Marxism” (31). This is noteworthy in that here we have a politically Marxist critic essentially saying that an overt Marxist political stance (as Van Wienen and Nelson articulate) is not intrinsically sufficient as a program of criticism because of its “orientation toward persuasion: Nelson and company often seem more oriented toward reshaping the reader’s vision of literary history than to disclosing the nature of the interaction between literature and history” (32). In other words, for Dayton, being a Marxist is all well and good, but literary criticism needs to investigate the ideological, structural, and economic forces that shape poets and poetry if it is to have any real value, for without that, “conflict thus appears more ethical than properly political” (34).

Such investigation is something that, Dayton charges, Van Wienen does not do: “ Partisans and Poets . . . never ventures to enquire into the deeper nature of the war itself, and so leaves unasked a variety of questions about the relationship between the war and literature about it” (35). It is true that Van Wienen, using the terminology of speech act theorist J. L. Austin, makes clear a bias against the modernist poetry of “locution”—“how a ‘grammatical utterance’ is produced within a particular formal network,” instead favoring partisan-political poems that foreground “illocution” or “the purpose of that utterance within a social situation” (Van Wienen 24). Yet, to be fair to Van Wienen, he does spend ample time delineating some of the deeper political and economic contexts of US involvement in World War I (18–22), as well as the ways that hegemonic discourses (in the Gramscian sense) and ideologies (in the Althusserian sense) intersect with the poetry that he chooses to discuss (30–34). Be that as it may, Dayton’s historical-materialist approach is rather comprehensive and allows him to engage with poets whose politics he clearly does not endorse, but whose work helps to illuminate the anachronistic rhetoric that often obscured the economic and political basis for US participation in World War I and the industrialized means by which its violence was carried out.

For example, Dayton devotes a whole chapter to Alan Seeger (most famous, of course, for his poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death”), who reacted against this era of capitalist modernity by retreating into the martial ideals of “an imagined medieval world” (98). Dayton is fairly devastating in his analysis, particularly when he contrasts Seeger’s romantic embrace of war with the reality of “the machine technology characteristic of the second industrial revolution . . . applied to the business of killing people” (116). Dayton demonstrates how medievalist discourse (employed by Seeger, along with Lynn Harold Hough, Henry van Dyke, William Hartley Holcomb, and Edward S. Van Zile) was marshaled in support of the US’ business interests: “Indeed, insofar as the First World War occurred within, not against, capitalist modernity and is a part of its unfolding dynamic, medievalism was largely incorporated by the social forces it scorned, providing Seeger and others with vital self-deceptions that helped enable one of modernity’s greatest atrocities” (117). Despite Seeger’s popularity during the war years, Dayton observes that there were other poets who refused to buy into the vision he put forward in “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” In 1918, Haniel Long (perhaps best known for his 1935 documentary political poem Pittsburgh Memoranda , which preceded and likely influenced Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead [1938]) published a sonnet titled “Seeger,” which deflates the heroism of its subject and thus, as Dayton observes, “avoids the high diction of war” (143). Such toggling back and forth between writers known and until-recently forgotten (and those somewhere in the middle), between those who wrote in popular, genteel, or even high-modernist styles, provides a more holistic understanding of the historical context of the poetic response in the Great War period, where the nonetheless valuable work of Fussell, Van Wienen, et al. is more concerned with either making or unmaking the canon of modernism.

Accordingly, Dayton’s analysis of E. E. Cummings’s war poems “next to of course god america i” and “my sweet old etcetera” returns him to contending with Van Wienen, whom Dayton criticizes for “inadequately characteriz[ing] and, perhaps as a consequence, undervalu[ing] the exact nature of Cummings’s response to the war” (223). Though Cummings is nowhere actually mentioned in Partisans and Poets , it is true that he would likely be lumped in with those modernist poets of locution and individualism whom Van Wienen rejects from the scope of his criticism. As a Marxist critic, however, Dayton looks to Adorno’s defense of lyric poetry for its role in revealing “the ineluctably dialectical nature of the individual-social relation” (241). For Dayton, the linguistic experimentation in the Cummings poems remains socially engaged because it satirizes the public discourse that justifies and supports a capitalistic war effort (with “next to of course god america i” exposing the idiocy of jingoistic nationalism and “my sweet old etcetera” attacking the familial pieties of the home front). At the same time, he notes in his conclusion the contradictory situation in which modernist literature itself did have “a profound political and social character as a commentary on the decisive event of the twentieth century,” yet also became largely reactionary and, with the advent of New Criticism, sought to unmoor itself from its sociohistorical context (250). Such contradictions may be further illustrated in the fact that Cummings later became a right-wing conservative, sympathetic to the anti-Communist ideologue Joseph McCarthy (Sawyer-Lauçanno 505).

… many of the texts I analyze have been criticized as too hermetic in comparison with the ostensible transparency of politically committed poetry and, censurably, as being disengaged with politics in a time of crisis. I argue, however, that these poets’ rhetorical strategies reveal an ethically motivated self-scrutiny about the use of language in wartime. (9)

Here her modus operandi is not unlike Dayton’s rhetorical approach to Cummings. This is not to say that the broadly antiwar stances of Stevens, Moore, and Stein (or, as noted, Cummings) make their conservative politics especially palatable to anyone on the left—for example, Galvin makes clear Stein’s support of the Vichy head of state Marshal Philippe Pétain and suggests that if her translations of his speeches, intended to “trumpet Pétain’s texts to Americans,” had been published, “Stein likely would have been considered a collaborator” (279). Instead, Galvin focuses on what she terms their “meta-rhetoric,” which she defines as “the self-reflexive use of rhetorical schemes and tropes to signal the literariness and mediated, constructed nature of a text” (22). She differentiates this from the more common practice of self-reflexivity that poets have engaged in especially from the twentieth century onward, and from the standard definition of rhetoric as persuasive writing, by foregrounding its wartime context and the mediation of the press, specifically newspaper reports from the front.

This strategy provides a means of overcoming the question of authority in a post–World War I era, where the participatory experience of the British soldier-poets (Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, etc.) had quickly come to be seen as the ne plus ultra of war writing. Yet no such anxiety prevented numerous noncombatant poets on both sides of the Atlantic, before, during, and immediately after the Great War, from commenting on it in poetic form (as the work of both Dayton and Van Wienen clearly demonstrates). In his critique of Fussell, Van Wienen decries the way “that British World War I poetry becomes not only the starting point for a canon of war literature that is decisively opposed to war, but also the origin of modernism,” which also had the effect of devaluing the authority of civilian, often female poets (26). Nonetheless, such views very quickly took hold. Indeed, Galvin observes that Auden, though too young to have fought in World War I, carried a sense of guilt about his lack of war experience and worshipped the authenticity of Wilfred Owen (103–8), while Marianne Moore famously came in for a savage attack from Randall Jarrell for her poem “In Distrust of Merits,” in which she, as a woman who would not have been allowed to participate in combat even if she had wished to, dared to speak as a civilian of the suffering of war (266–72). Galvin takes up Auden’s phrase “the guilt which every civilian must feel at not being in the fighting line” to describe the problem many of these poets faced (12). Meta-rhetoric, she asserts, allows civilian poets to comment on events that they have not observed firsthand by admitting their own lack of combat experience, or “flesh-witnessing” (Galvin borrows this term from Samuel Hynes), paradoxically creating one kind of authority by exposing the lack of another.

Galvin does not deal in any length with the causes of or discourses surrounding World War II, aside from stating that it was a continuation of previous conflicts (104–6, 258). The varying, often conservative politics of the modernist poets she takes up notwithstanding, insofar as they all seem to arrive at a broadly antiwar position, speaking out in meta-rhetorical ways against the brutality of it, raises the question of exactly what broader ideological frameworks the poets were either supporting or resisting. From our vantage point, we commonly view World War II as the “Good War” heroically waged against fascism, and in some respects of course that is true. Yet at the time, as historian Kenneth D. Rose reminds us, in the run-up to and throughout the war, Americans had no clear picture of its purpose or their role in it. Indeed, he observes, there was “little in the way of flag-waving patriotism among ordinary Americans, and even less in the way of a rationale for taking part in the war in the first place,” going on to explain that this was in large part to do with the memory of the carnage of World War I, for “it had been appeals to American idealism and patriotism that had led to U.S. participation in that earlier catastrophe” (61). Thus, it seems that the poets that Galvin analyzes, Auden, Moore, Stein, and Stevens especially, whatever their individual politics, are writing out of a kind of cynicism about war in general and the resulting senseless violence. As Rose further writes, “The lack of an informing ideology seemed to affect the entire society,” and the sometimes wry tone of these civilian poets roughly mirrors that of soldier-poets like Jarrell and Karl Shapiro (64).

One wonders, then, if all the civilian poets under consideration here really felt as much guilt (per se) about their lack of flesh-witness as Auden did, given the overall lack of enthusiasm for participation. To look at it another way, Moore was already in her fifties during World War II and had no choice but to observe the unfolding of events through the mediation of the press. In any case, the issue of how to write about a war one has not seen firsthand was definitely a concern. Galvin makes the point that, in “In Distrust of Merits,” Moore already “anticipates responses from later critics such as Jarrell” by “articulating occluded vision, the problem of the observer at a distance who is not a flesh-witness” (262). This not only makes Jarrell’s attack all the more unwarranted but gives new insight to Moore’s broader poetics, which Galvin observes “often acknowledge that they are inextricable from discursive structures within which they are born,” but which is “intensified in her poems that respond to news of war” (261). Stein goes so far as to use the title Wars I Have Seen (1945) for the multigenre text that Galvin analyzes as an “anti-newspaper,” and in a sense it is apt (280). Despite (or perhaps because of) her accommodationist approach toward the Nazi occupation of France (and even her own home), Stein did have a kind of firsthand experience of the war: “Living in a country occupied by a hostile military certainly counts as witnessing war, and for innumerable noncombatants, wartime means precisely what Stein describes: waiting, worrying, working, stockpiling food, seeking news, gathering rumors, anticipating violence” (Galvin 286). Her use of meta-rhetoric involves her “pressing upon the question of what is ‘real,’” which may or may not resemble a possible response to the experience of battle (290). Certainly, the irony or disjuncture that Fussell emphasizes as the hallmark of the British soldier-poets could impart a feeling of unreality, but in those poems, it always emerges as a result of the horror experienced directly.

At the same time, the authority of flesh-witnessing is not in itself unassailable. As we have seen, Dayton argues that Seeger, a combatant eventually killed in action in World War I, deployed poetry as part of an elaborate “self-deception” about that war. The absurdity of Rupert Brooke’s simile of young men volunteering for battle “as swimmers into cleanness leaping” has been widely remarked (4). In defending her focus on civilian-authored war poetry, Galvin avers that “flesh-witnessing has certain dangers as an episteme”; “the risk is that it will help perpetuate an idealization of experience that obstructs empathy and forecloses political debate” (15). Largely avoiding these dangers, however, Gilbert examines the work of the US soldier-poets who actively participated in the American War in Vietnam. His study, A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam (2018), thus excludes certain significant figures such as John Balaban (a conscientious objector who served as a medic in Vietnam) because its stated focus is “on a group of people whose participation in, and perpetration of, the violence of the war provides them with a particularly interesting and potentially insightful vantage point from which to view the conflict’s moral issues” (8). Gilbert asserts that his study is not meant to be taken as a literary analysis; the many poets and poems that he reads (with particular attention paid to W. D. Ehrhart, Bruce Weigl, Yusef Komunyakaa, David Connolly, and Dick Shea) illuminate intersecting moral and historical questions. For Gilbert, this body of poetry is an overlooked reservoir of knowledge bearing witness to the experience of US soldiers in Vietnam.

Drawing on the work of moral historian Jonathan Glover rather than Marx, Gilbert, like Dayton, also relies heavily on Adorno as well as the further insight of Albert Camus’s philosophical text The Rebel (1951). As in Dayton’s study, Gilbert puts forward a view of the Vietnam War as “an imperialistic inheritance,” driven forward by the profit motive of large corporations (214). The poets he analyzes on this aspect of the war (Connolly, Lamont Steptoe, Steve Mason) are particularly scathing. The poets’ accounts of killing and their frequent depiction of American atrocities suggest an answer to Adorno’s famous declaration that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (qtd. in Gilbert 29). Adorno himself later gave nuance to this pronouncement, Gilbert points out, and then adds to it with his claim that “ there is no longer beauty or consolation except in the gaze falling on horror, withstanding it, and in unalleviated consciousness of negativity holding fast to the possibility of what is better ” (qtd. in Gilbert 29, Gilbert’s emphasis). In this light, Gilbert reads the work of Weigl and Ehrhart especially as a kind of atonement for the moral wrongs of the war and a rejection of the politics and discourses (for example, of patriotism, masculinity, race) supporting it.

Also in light of the aforementioned Adorno passage, perhaps, much of this poetry only foregrounds flesh-witnessing in a direct, confessional style, neither needing to engage in elaborate strategies of modernist meta-rhetoric nor wishing to construct, like Seeger, romantic or idealistic justifications of militarism. Aside from language itself, there is no mediation between direct experience and the page. Gilbert contends that these poets “show little desire for detachment but rather a strong resolve to enter into an engaged relationship with the world through their poetry” and quotes Weigl’s lines, “I can’t abide / by words that simply decorate” (29). Of course, this further reinforces these poets’ ethos of moral authority, but it is also an interesting contrast to the treatment of the American War in Vietnam in other genres of art, like film (especially Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now [1979] and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket [1987]), Michael Herr’s journalistic novel Dispatches (1977), and the fiction of Tim O’Brien, which often rely on postmodern strategies of disjuncture that blur the lines between reality and perception. Indeed, Fredric Jameson called the American War in Vietnam the “first terrible postmodern war,” which created a “breakdown of all previous narrative paradigms . . . along with the breakdown of any shared language through which a veteran might convey such experience” (44). Eric Gadzinski, for one, makes a tentative case for Weigl’s work as postmodern in the way that the “decentering transparency of” the trauma of the past intrudes upon the speaker’s sense of the present, destabilizing it (137), but, for Gilbert, the poetry’s direct style, which ethically lets its gaze fall on the horror without aestheticizing it very much, is also what allows it to be treated as a historical archive.

In this manner, given the still-ongoing wrangling over the causes and meaning of the US war in Vietnam, Gilbert’s book is a useful counterpoint to another recent recasting of its history, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary series The Vietnam War (2017). Both works centralize the testimony of soldier participants (Ehrhart appears in both), yet each makes a different argument. Even though Burns and Novick attend to the colonialist roots of the conflict, they seem intent on justifying the US involvement in Vietnam while belittling the antiwar protesters at home, whom they too often portray as either naïve fools or violent thugs. In contrast, Gilbert’s study demonstrates that many Vietnam veterans—at least those who became poets—actively supported civilian antiwar protestors “as the group of Americans who actually fulfilled their responsibility by attempting to end the war” (239). Furthermore, many even came to sympathize with the cause of the Vietcong. Gilbert registers “the widespread belief among the poets that the Vietnamese revolutionaries were fighting for a moral cause; just as there is little in the poetry that blames the revolutionaries, there is rarely any suggestion that they were fighting in anything other than a justifiable campaign” (200). Thus, we see poetry taking an active role in a debate of great political import and instantiating an ethical response to a morally repugnant war.

As contemporary poets consider strategies for engaging with and possibly resisting the US’ … perpetual, low-level … warfare throughout the Middle East and around the globe … these three scholars offer key signposts for navigating that process.

Brooke Rupert. “Peace.” Poetry , vol. 6 , no. 1 , April 1915 , p. 18 .

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Burns Ken , Novick Lynn , directors. The Vietnam War . PBS , 2017 .

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Dayton Tim. American Poetry and the First World War . Cambridge UP , 2018 .

Fussell Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. 1975 . Oxford UP , 2013 .

Gadzinski Eric. “Bruised Azaleas: Bruce Weigl and the Postwar Aesthetic.” The Vietnam War and Postmodernity , edited by Bibby Michael , U of Massachusetts P , 1999 , pp. 129 – 40 .

Galvin Rachel. News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936–1945 . Oxford UP , 2018 .

Gilbert Adam. A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam . U of Massachusetts P , 2018 .

Jameson Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . Duke UP , 1991 .

Leavell Linda. Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore . Farrar , Straus and Giroux , 2013 .

Rose Kenneth D. Myth and the Greatest Generation: A Social History of Americans in World War II . Routledge , 2008 .

Sawyer-Lauçanno Christopher. E. E. Cummings: A Biography . Sourcebooks , 2004 .

Smith Tracy K. “Political Poetry Is Hot Again: The Poet Laureate Explores Why, and How.” The New York Times Book Review , 10 Dec. 2018 . Web .

Van Wienen Mark W. Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War . Cambridge UP , 1997 .

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An Introduction to English War Poetry

The poet’s career doesn’t end once he dies. The soldier’s career arguably does. The poet-soldier, then, has died physically, but what remains of him is his art. Both Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge managed to create something that transcended their persons and lasted long after being killed in war.

One of the greatest contributions to modern English poetry came through the works that described World War I, in great part because of WWI’s significance on human history. Poetry written by soldiers is one of the best ways to approach literature on the subject, and it will be the focus of this essay to introduce two war poets, one Englishman and one Irishman, who conveyed the sense of being a soldier in the Great War and, in turn, were transformed by this event. Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge were two such poets whose pieces drew upon elements of nature to communicate a soldier’s isolation and his acceptance, even embrace, of imminent death. These two poets were common men, and sometimes within the canon of English and Western literature we may forget that there were talented writers of value even if they did not reach international renown. Many times, it is only through the art of small men that we can understand the impact of the forces that we create and that envelop us as they grow out of control.

Edward Thomas was an English poet born in 1878. He enlisted as a soldier at the age of thirty-seven in 1915 and was killed, after two years of training, on the first day of battle in Arras, France in 1917.[1] Francis Ledwidge, born in 1887, enlisted as a soldier in 1914 at the young age of twenty-seven and was killed three years later in Boezinge, Belgium.[2] Though both of these men wrote several poems inspired by their experiences fighting during the Great War, they were not concerned with the war as a political or controversial topic. In fact, those familiar with war poetry might wonder why I don’t mention better-known WWI poets, like Wilfred Owen. All soldiers were diverse people who understood war differently. Owen had one of the most explicit critiques of war, and I think most of his fame came from that political statement. Take his most famous poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” the message of which can be understood from a first reading:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori .

The poem is moving, no doubt, because it is a true depiction of war. Even in his blunt description of battle, Owen manages to describe death in beautiful verse, “Dim through the misty panes and thick green light / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” (13-14), followed by a nightmarish description of the image that haunts him in his sleep. The moral of the story? It is a lie, that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. Owen’s message resonated with many anti-war activists, and this statement is not meant to detract from what is an exceptional poem with intricate literary devices (just read the first two lines out loud! Alliteration, assonance, almost onomatopoeic, making the sound of soldiers marching—amazing). But I do think Owen’s political message has influenced his appreciation as a poet as being more for his message, not for his poetry .

What I prefer about the lesser-known war poets is the humility of their voice, which is more preoccupied with coming to terms with themselves as soldiers, as the helpless victims of circumstance, rather than criticizing the world for what’s happened to them. What Thomas and Ledwidge seemed to understand was that during times of war wherein a soldier found himself lost and alone, it was man’s relationship with himself that took priority over everything else. While the spirit of the soldier who sacrifices himself for others is revered, I do believe that, internally, what took place in the minds of these soldiers was a necessary form of isolation that turned into self-reflection. This excerpt of a letter from Ledwidge to a woman named Katherine conveys a similar sentiment to Owen’s poem, but in a very different tone:

If I survive the war, I have great hopes of writing something that will live. If not, I trust to be remembered in my own land for one or two things which its long sorrow inspired… You ask me what I am doing. I am a unit in the Great War, doing and suffering… I may be dead before this reaches you, but I will have done my part… I am always homesick. I hear the roads calling, and the hills, and the rivers wondering where I am. It is terrible to always be homesick. —Francis Ledwidge, Letter to Katherine Tynan, dated 6 January 1917 .[3]

It is not poetry, of course, but it was written by a poet. Notice how Ledwidge says that if he “survives,” he wants to write something that will “live.” He does not use the word “live” for himself, although we usually say, “if I live.” It is almost as though Ledwidge is recognizing that he’s already lost a part of himself. Ledwidge viewed himself as a “unit,” just going through the motions of what needed to be done. It was not on the battlefield or while doing his duty as a soldier, then, that the individual fighter contemplated himself. Their relationship with the self, then, was the solution to their loneliness and feeling of insignificance.

The machinery used during the Great War meant that infantry combat was only a secondary resource in battle, and this change in weaponry prevented the individual soldier from playing a direct part in this industrialized war.[4] People’s belief in a heroic image of one body of men fighting arm in arm was shattered upon realizing that soldiers were dying undignified and by the thousands. The question then became, what was a singular man’s place amidst such mass destruction? Truly, his identity was overcome by an agglomerate of soldiers who were treated as objects. What “greater” sense of himself could the soldier contribute to a cause devoid of greatness?

For Edward Thomas and Francis Ledwidge, the way that they contemplated their place and themselves was through their poetry, and nature was an integral part of this relationship because it was a direct way for them to envision home. Since home was seldom in proximity for the soldier, it can be deduced that he often resorted to his immediate surroundings to find comfort and reassurance. Both Thomas and Ledwidge developed this sort of companionship with nature.

Nature’s characteristic as an ongoing duality between life and death, the beauty of creation and destruction, bore resemblance to what they were experiencing on a daily basis, and they perceived it, therefore, as a reflection of their own lives. Thomas and Ledwidge did not solely use nature in their poetry to recount their personal experiences, however, but they also used it to create a space of recognition for the individual faceless soldier as a method of remembrance. They used the symbol of a grave to manifest this sentiment.

The Grave Symbolic for Death and Life

Since there were no number of graves that would suffice for the number of casualties in the Great War, the grave as it was used by these two poets is a symbol for what it represents. In the case of Edward Thomas, the grave as a symbol of remembrance was more important than the physical tombstone. He did not mention graves in his poems, nor did he describe or reference them. Thomas’ focus on the grave was on the writings that would commonly go on the tombstone, and he replicated them in lyrical structure and form in his verses. This elegiac form, often meant for epitaphs, is common in several of his poems.[5] Thomas saw a contrast with epitaphs since they represented what was fixed but also what was transcendent, and he even attributed a literary value to them.[6] An example of such a poem is titled, “In Memoriam (Easter 1915)”:

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will never do again. (1-4)

This poem, written in iambic pentameter with an alternating end-rhyme, is typical of an elegiac stanza, which is a fitting style based on the content of Thomas’ piece since it is a poem of remembrance for the men who left for war and did not return. Nature is immediately invoked when Thomas mentions the flowers “left thick at nightfall in the wood” (1) that should have been gathered by the young soldiers and their sweethearts. Thomas acknowledges that seeing the life of the flowers that have not been picked calls to mind the death of the soldiers: the presence of one thing represents the absence of another.

Thomas used the flower as a symbol of both remembrance and impermanence to recall the past, note the present, and contemplate the future. The importance of nature in the poem might be further stressed upon considering that Thomas used un-plucked flowers in the woods as the main subject. It is only upon seeing the flowers that he is reminded of the dead soldiers. Rather than addressing the dead soldiers directly, Thomas prefers to invoke them through nature even though the poem, as the title expresses, is meant to be an elegy or epitaph of some sort for the men who died in war.

Another poem that expresses this notion of the grave as a point of convergence for death and life is “A Soldier’s Grave” by Francis Ledwidge. It bears some similarity to “In Memoriam (Easter 1915)” since flowers are also mentioned and used as a symbol of remembrance, but the flowers are only secondary to the greater symbol that is the actual earth-grave, which is the main subject of the poem. Here, however, the grave is one with nature, or, rather, the grave is a platform for nature:

And where the earth was soft for flowers we made A grave for him that he might better rest. So, Spring shall come and leave it sweet arrayed, And there the lark shall turn her dewy nest (5-8)

Spring is personified to depict a regenerating force that will decorate the soldier’s grave with different forms of life. A grave was made where “the earth was soft” (5), and spring will use this ground as its stage to grow new flowers and attract birds to lay their nests (8). In the context of this poem, death relieves the soldier from his burdens and even results in beauty and harmony as nature pushes the cycle forward, thus demonstrating that time continues to pass as one life ends by turning the soldier’s resting place into a display of new life. Both poets console the horrors of war with the beauty of nature and portray nature as playing an active role in death and life. By attributing these characteristics to nature, Thomas and Ledwidge are displaying self-awareness in their role as a soldier. They hint, likewise, at their acceptance of death since their poems display a similar disposition towards mortality, where the thought of dying comes no longer as a fear, but as a part of nature.

The Notion of “Passing” as Nature

Francis Ledwidge was able to depict nature as serene and personify it as a force of aid for the dying soldier. We can further analyze his poem “A Soldier’s Grave” and look at the first stanza to corroborate this point:

Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death Lest he should hear again the mad alarms Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath (1-4)

With his opening line, Ledwidge immediately assumes a narrative tone, which serves to calm the reader since the poet sounds like he is telling a pleasant story that is taking place in a tranquil setting, “the lull of midnight” (1). The simple alternating end-rhyme scheme enhances this emotion as each stanza concludes in such a way that sounds complete, and the word-choice (lull, gentle, lifted, slowly) reassures the reader that what is happening to the soldier is a good thing rather than a negative one. In terms of the story that Ledwidge is telling, an unknown entity is introduced whose role is to ease the soldier’s passing and carry him peacefully towards death: But the reader is not told who or what it is; it is simply described as “gentle arms” (1). Though it might be difficult to infer who or what the gentle arms refer to, Ledwidge seems to imply that the entity is a gracious and sympathetic one since it is taking the soldier away from “the mad alarms of battle, dying moans, and painful breath” (3-4).

Francis Ledwidge briefly mentioned the journey from life towards death in “A Soldier’s Grave” when he describes the soldier being lifted down death’s slopes (2). Edward Thomas elaborated on this journey to a greater extent in “Lights Out,” which was written by Thomas in 1916 just before going to war.[7] The poem is about the process of dying, and he describes this gradual passing, which he calls a sleep, by relating it to walking in a forest. The presence of nature here plays a distinct role: It is no longer a kind and sympathetic force as Ledwidge portrayed in his poem; rather, Thomas depicts it as intense and inescapable:

I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

Many a road and track That, since the dawn’s first crack, Up to the forest brink, Deceived the travelers, Suddenly now blurs, And in they sink. (1-12)

Nature, here in the form of a forest, is bottomless; if sleep were a land, Thomas describes the borders of this realm as abysmal since he chooses to break the sentence at a moment where the sentence reads, “I have come to the borders of sleep / The unfathomable deep…” (1-2) It is only after continuing the poem that Thomas reveals a forest that is inevitable; “where all must lose their way, however straight or winding, soon or late; they cannot choose” (3-6). Considering the conditions and timing under which Thomas wrote this poem, prior to going to war and a year before his death, we can assume that Thomas used sleep to refer to death and the forest as a metaphor for the passing. The two symbols of sleep and the forest combined emphasize the inevitability of death since Thomas explains that everyone will eventually succumb to this sleep regardless of the path they take. All the roads and tracks that “deceived” travelers, perhaps into thinking death would not come for them, blur at the forest brink. That forest is a whole wherein they sink: A deep sleep.

Nature, in this respect, has tricked and captured the traveler wandering through the forest, which might cause the reader to view nature as a negative force. The subsequent stanzas, however, rectify this false assumption as Thomas defends the forest as being a neutral place where all emotion is distilled and where the traveler can rid himself of all earthly cares:

Here love ends, Despair, ambition ends; All pleasure and all trouble, Although most sweet or bitter, Here ends in sleep that is sweeter Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book Or face of dearest look That I would not turn from now To go into the unknown I must enter, and leave, alone, I know now how. (13-24)

It is interesting to note that Thomas describes death as neither good nor bad: both pleasure and trouble end, both love and despair (1-3). The fourth stanza in the poem indicates a type of personal relief in death that is incomparable to any worldly joy. “Face” (20) in this context represents any family or friend that would normally keep Thomas from dying, while “book” (19) might be a symbol for any moral, intellectual, or philosophical code of ethics that might make a man believe that it is better to continue living. Alternatively, it could be a metaphorical representation of literature and of Thomas’ potential career as a literary figure, since he was a well-reputed writer and book reviewer before he enlisted in the army. Thomas determines, nonetheless, that neither will stop him from entering the unknown.

In the fifth and final stanza of the poem, Thomas returns to his nature imagery and completes a cycle not only in the mechanical structure of the poem as he brings back the image of the forest, but also in a metaphorical sense since he concludes by expressing the embrace of death as a release from the self and a unification with nature:

The tall forest towers; Its cloudy foliage lowers Ahead, shelf above shelf; Its silence I hear and obey That I may lose my way And myself. (25-30)

There is a clear contradiction when Thomas states that he is able to “hear” (28) the forest’s silence and that this absence of sound is what persuades him to obey it. It is as though the forest did not need to do anything to convince Thomas to comply; rather, the impulse to follow it comes intuitively and subconsciously. While the forest seems to overpower Thomas as “its cloudy foliage lowers” (26) over him and beckons him to venture deeper, Thomas simultaneously displays free will and choice by acknowledging the fact that in so doing he will lose his path in the forest and ultimately himself (30). The facts that Thomas senses an invitation from the forest, that he understands what he must do without the need for an audible command or signal, and that he is well aware of the consequences, serve to support the idea that he views passing to be almost instinctive and part of nature.

By placing such an emphasis on dying while concurrently using nature as a metaphor and analogy to describe the process, Thomas and Ledwidge affirm an instinctual connection between their deaths and their environment. For both of these poets, the transience of nature was a way to understand and justify their role as a soldier likely to die at any moment. Thomas’ poem opens the important subject of English WWI poetry: the self.

The “Self” and Individual Life

Although the previous poems might insinuate that Thomas and Ledwidge had accepting dispositions towards death, they wrote other poems on the matter that conflicted with the notion of them having one view of death. The thought of death might have served as alleviation for these poets, but it did not resolve many questions in regard to their place amidst the Great War, after all. Their poetry was the attempt to validate the life and death of the soldier more than it was an outward critique on war. Thomas and Ledwidge placed a heavy importance on the “self” and the individual life of the soldier as he lived and suffered the war, for this experience tremendously affected his perception of the world, of life, and of death. From the traumatizing events that they endured, an existential question correspondingly arose and troubled the soldier’s mind: were his efforts and his death justified? Would he ever have recompense for his efforts, even after death? Francis Ledwidge addressed these questions in one of his most famous poems, “Lament for Thomas MacDonagh.” MacDonagh was a revolutionary leader during the 1916 Easter Rising who was executed by the British Army.[8] Ledwidge wrote a poem in his honor where he revealed his thoughts on the individual who sacrificed his life and died for a greater cause:

He shall not hear the bittern cry In the wild sky where he is lain Nor voices of the sweeter birds Above the wailing of the rain

Nor shall he know when loud March blows Thro’ slanting snows his fanfare shrill Blowing to flame the golden cup Of many an upset daffodil (1-8)

The opening stanza bears some resemblance to Thomas’ poem, “Lights Out” in the sense that Ledwidge is describing death indifferently as a state of neither pain nor happiness: Ledwidge states that MacDonagh will hear neither “the bittern cry” (1) nor the sounds of “the sweeter birds” (3). MacDonagh, moreover, will not be able to witness the winter: “Nor shall he know when loud March blows / Thro’ slanting snows his fanfare shrill” (5-6). Ledwidge strengthens this sentiment by using words like “wild” (2) to describe the sky, and the winter and the rain as cacophonous with their “wailing” (4) and “shrill” (6). This desolate landscape depicts nature as harsh, destructive, and violent as the winter “blows to flame” (7) the golden cups of daffodils.

The first two stanzas paint a bleak landscape to reflect how Ledwidge feels about the death of Thomas MacDonagh as he uses words such as “upset” (8) and “bittern” (1) to further emphasize his discontent. Through these statements, Ledwidge addresses the existential question of the life and soul of a man after death, but he seems to lean towards the opinion that MacDonagh is completely gone. It isn’t until the third stanza that Ledwidge introduces a hesitation, providing an optimistic and alternative view to MacDonagh’s untimely death:

But when the Dark Cow leaves the moor And pastures poor with greedy weeds Perhaps he’ll hear her low at morn Lifting her horns in pleasant meads (8-12)

Ledwidge continues to describe the landscape in a negative form, “pastures poor with greedy weeds” (9). This adjective choice for the weeds implies that there is some sort of corruption occurring on this field, which perhaps is a reference to the political instability occurring in Ireland at the time of the Easter Rebellion, since it was during this event that MacDonagh died (again, history is vital for good poetry writing and study). This negative landscape is reconciled once Ledwidge inserts an important shift by introducing the Dark Cow leaving this field. The “Dark Cow” (8) that Ledwidge foresees eventually leaving the moor is turned into a proper noun, which supports the idea that the cow is a metaphor for his country and Ledwidge’s way of optimistically expressing the possibility of Ireland overcoming its tumultuous state.

The most important lines in the poem are the final two where Ledwidge readdresses the question of MacDonagh’s death by considering the possibility that, if and once Ireland overcomes its strife, MacDonagh will be able to see (even from beyond the grave) his country prosper once again. Ledwidge achieves this optimistic shift by using the key word “perhaps” (11) to state that MacDonagh will be able to hear the Dark Cow (that is, Ireland) and see her “lifting her horns in pleasant meads” (12), an image of triumph and pride. This gesture that Ledwidge attributes to the cow not only reveals his hopes for Ireland, but also his feelings towards MacDonagh’s death: By being able to hear the cow upon lifting her horns, MacDonagh’s senses are restored and his memory, therefore, brought back to life.

Ledwidge’s interest in the soul of Thomas MacDonagh reveals his own personal curiosity regarding the soul of the individual before and after death. Edward Thomas also addressed this issue in his poem, “Rain,” by questioning this same subject and placing emphasis on the senses to express the possibility of the self ceasing to exist after death:

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into solitude. (1-6)

The prominence and repetition of the word “rain” in the first line replicates the rhythm of raindrops, which implies that Thomas is actively listening to the rain and is therefore in a state of deep contemplation. The third line of the poem reveals that Thomas is thinking about his death; yet, it is not his death that is troubling him, but rather the notion of losing his senses and, therefore, of losing himself.

Francis Ledwidge wrote a similar poem titled “Soliloquy,” in which he assesses the importance of being a soldier and the probability of dying. The poem opens with a reflection on his youth and progresses chronologically with him through the years. The third stanza is the break in the poem where his thoughts come back to the present moment:

And now I’m drinking wine in France, The helpless child of circumstance. Tomorrow will be loud with war, How will I be accounted for? (15-18)

By questioning what will happen if he dies, Ledwidge acknowledges the risk he runs of potentially being killed; yet, in the last stanza of his poem, he seems to dispose of this worry by glorifying himself as a soldier:

It is too late now to retrieve A fallen dream, too late to grieve A name unmade, but not too late To thank the gods for what is great; A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart, Is greater than a poet’s art. And greater than a poet’s fame A little grave that has no name. (19-26)

Ledwidge refers to himself indirectly when he states, “A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart / Is greater than a poet’s art” (23-24). He adds, “And greater than a poet’s fame” (25) is “a little grave that has no name” (26). This statement seems to contradict the aforementioned letter he sent to Katherine Tynan expressing how he hoped to live and become a great poet. Is he being sarcastic? It is difficult to say.

Within these poems, Thomas and Ledwidge make clear that their words are more than a mere expression of observations and recounting of events as soldiers in the Great War. Their quest was more profound, directed inwards towards themselves and less directed towards their audience.

The Great Grave

The poet’s career doesn’t end once he dies. The soldier’s career arguably does. The poet-soldier, then, has died physically, but what remains of him (as Ledwidge noted in his letter) is his art. There was, however, a certain inhumanity about the way soldiers’ deaths were regarded.

Since both poets managed to create something that transcended their persons and lasted long after being killed in war, their absence was not necessarily detrimental to the poetry itself. But what of that part of them that was a mere soldier, a unit in the war? The day that Ledwidge was killed, for example, the chaplain recorded his death as follows:

Crowds at Holy Communion. Arrange for service but washed out by rain and fatigues. Walk in rain with dogs. Ledwidge killed, blown to bits; at Confession yesterday and Mass and Holy Communion this morning. R.I.P.[9]

Ledwidge’s collection of poems titled “Songs of Peace” was published in September 1916, three months after his death, under the description of a “Soldier Poet Fallen in the War.”[10] This image rendered him as an epitome of the brave soldier, and it seems that the soldier brand stuck with him more than the poet part. But although this image was a kind way of portraying him to a greater cause—the fallen soldier—it set aside Francis Ledwidge’s identity as an individual who experienced the world (or which war was the last part). A contemporary poet at the time, John Drinkwater, was one of the few who refuted how Ledwidge’s death was portrayed to people, which he believed to be insulting. In regards to Ledwidge’s death, he wrote:

The continual insistence, not that his devotion is splendid, but that it is upon us that his devotion may splendidly bestow itself, is contemptible… his poetry exults me, while not so his death. And it is well for us to keep our minds fixed on this plain fact, that when he died, a poet was not transfigured, but killed, and his poetry was not magnified, but blasted in its first flowering.[11]

As Drinkwater observed, death, despite being a source of influence for many of his poems, managed to abruptly halt what would have been a promising career for Ledwidge. This is a problem that is difficult to overcome: What role does strife play for the artist? Pain and suffering may help him develop his art, but at what cost? Although he enlisted voluntarily, the setting in which he died was artificially created; the way his death was recorded, almost absurd.

There are only some of the questions that come to me when I read war poetry, but it is a great genre in poetry that merits more study beyond this (very short) introduction. The most fitting way to conclude this essay is with one more poem by Ledwidge. The bucolic poem, “Behind The Closed Eye,” describes what Ledwidge understood to be his personal encounter with death: A return home, to Ireland.

I walk the old frequented ways That wind around the tangled braes, I live again the sunny days Ere I the city knew.

And scenes of old again are born, The woodbine lassoing the thorn, And drooping Ruth-like in the corn The poppies weep the dew.

Above me in their hundred schools The magpies bend their young to rules, And like an apron full of jewels The dewy cobweb swings.

And frisking in the stream below The troutlets make the circles flow, And the hungry crane doth watch them grow As a smoker does his rings.

Above me smokes the little town, With its whitewashed walls and roofs of brown And its octagon spire toned smoothly down As the holy minds within.

And wondrous impudently sweet, Half of him passion, half conceit, The blackbird calls adown the street Like the piper of Hamelin.

I hear him, and I feel the lure Drawing me back to the homely moor, I’ll go and close the mountains’ door On the city’s strife and din.

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1 Biography of Edward Thomas by Poets.org .

2 Francis Ledwidge Museum .

3 Alice Curtayne, Francis Ledwidge, A Life of the Poet , (Dublin: New Island Books, 1998.) 170.

4 Helen B. McCartney, “The First World War Soldier and his contemporary image in Britain,” International Affairs , Feb. 2014: 299.

5 Move Him Into the Sun .

6 Judy Kendall, Edward Thomas: Origins of His Poetry (LLandybïe: University of Wales Press, 2012), 57.

7 Wojciech Klepuszewski, “ ‘Lights Out’: Edward Thomas on the Way to War ,” Revue LISA/LISA e-journal , Mar. 2012, 69-82.

8 Thomas Macdonagh Heritage Centre

9 Alice Curtayne, Francis Ledwidge, A Life of the Poet (Dublin: New Island Books, 1998) 188.

10 Ibid. 190.

11 Ibid. 191.

Editor’s note: The featured image is a battle scene which depicts the bravery of Alvin C. York, one of the most decorated United States Army soldiers of World War I, (1919 ) by Frank Schoonover (1877-1972), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons .

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War Poetry and Poets in English Literature

Introduction

Table of Contents

The First World War had a far-reaching effect on English poetry. It provided a new source of inspiration for the poets of established reputation and brought to public notice many poets, particularly among the young men who fought in the war. Moreover, it serves as a great social document. There can be no clearer reflection of the changing national attitude to the war than that found in war poetry . Broadly two phases of the national attitude can be distinguished in war poetry. The first was one of patriotic fervour, almost of rejoicing in the opportunity of self-sacrifice in the cause of human freedom, and a revival of the romantic conception of the knight-at-arms (Albert). Many poets who lived and served throughout the war had this patriotic fervour of the early years unaffected. But as the carnage went on increasing and there was no hope of its end, other poets arose with the declared intention of blasting this romantic illusion of the glory of war by a frank realistic depiction of the horrors, savagery and futility of war. This realistic attitude to the war was at first cried down as unpatriotic, but it has stood the test of time better than the romantic attitude of the early years. The poets of the 1914-18 war divide themselves into two groups- romantic war poets and realistic war poets.

(A) Romantic War Poets

I. rupert brooke.

The most outstanding of the romantic (idealistic) war poets was Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). Much of Brooke’s reputation is due to his remarkably good looks, his winning personality and his premature death in action stifling great expectations. He began to write poetry in the Georgian tradition, drawing inspirations from nature and simple pleasures. Out of this Georgian mood he was swept by the high emotions inspired by the rising wave of patriotism on the eve of the world war. He hailed the war with patriotic fervour. He wrote a number of war sonnets to express his patriotic enthusiasm, his pride in England, and his resolve to serve her. He became the spokesman for the dedication of the English people to the cause of their country. Of his war sonnets the most typical is The Soldier . It rings with his pride in being an Englishman and his glorification of the death of English soldiers in the front for England. He enlisted as a soldier and went to war to defend the honour of his motherland. As a war-poet he takes an idealistic view of war and speaks of its glory, glamour and heroism, and not its brutality and ghastliness.

It is natural to speculate what a great poet he might have been if he had lived on. The marks of greatness in his poems are few, but such marks there are. He saw the world with a clear eye and recorded what he saw with directness and clarity. Yet, however poetic in himself, he is more important as the occasion of poetry in others. ”The war-time revival of English poetry,” as Ward says, “had its origin in Brooke alone.”

“Rupert Brooke may be styled as a twentieth century Keats, having many points in common with him. He has the same rich sensuousness, the same maturity of expression, something of the same poignant yearning for beauty.”

His poetry was published in Poems (1911); 1914 and other Poems (1915) and Collected Poems (1918).

II. Julian Grenfell

Another victim of the First World War , Julian Grenfell (1888–1915), maintains a spirit of tranquility and confidence not found in other war poets. In the midst of fire he can withdraw into himself and find solace in the objects of nature–trees, birds, grass, stars, etc. His famous poem Into Battle mirrors this serene attitude in which even death does not appear the horror it is.

 (B) The Anti-War Poets

I. siegfried sassoon.

Siegfried Sassoon (18861967) is the first soldier poet to treat the war with horrifying realism and bitter satire and irony. Invalided early in the war, he writes from his personal experiences in the front. Unlike Rupert Brooke he does not throw any romantic veil over the realities of war, which he depicts “as a dirty mess of blood and decaying bodies.” A pacifist at heart he writes about the nightmare of trench warfare and other horrors. In his Counter-attack (1918), a collection of violent, embittered poems, he paints, with a studied bluntness, and often a provocative coarseness of language, the horrors of life and death in the trenches, dug-outs and hospitals. A merciless and calculated realism gives to his work a vitality not previously found in English poetry. His poetry bears the stamp of his determination to shock the people at home into the bitter realization of the ghastly truth. It burns with anger with the arm chair politicians responsible for war.

His other war poems are War Poems (1919), Picture-show (1920) and Satirical Poems (1926). Sassoon’s work inspired the greatest of all the war poets Wilfred Owen.

War Poetry by Siegfried Sassoon

• The Last Meeting
• The Death Bed
• The Poet as Hero
• Suicide in the Trenches

II. Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) is the greatest of the war poets. He discards the usual romantic notions about war and strikes a new realistic note in his war poetry. Unlike Rupert Brooke he does not find in soldiers’ exploits “a sense of new crusades and modern knightliness.” He expresses in his poems the dreadful experience he underwent as a soldier, Inspired by Sassoon’s war poetry he presents the cruelty and inhumanity of a soldier’s doing, the reality and futility of war and the reckless wastage of nobility, youth and heroism. He looks upon war as a meaningless dance of death and an agency of great suffering to mankind. He regards it as the cruel business of the arm-chair politicians who exploit the blooming youth in the name of patriotism.

But what distinguishes Owen’s war poetry is not the description of the horrors of war, but the exploration of the pity of war. As he himself says, in the preface to his poems (1920):

“Above all, I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is war and the pity of war, The poetry is in the pity.”

There is in each of his poems a piercing pity welling out of the colossal waste of human life and opportunity, the callous indifference with which human lives are thrown away in the front a pity more sober and restrained, yet deeper far than the sentimental pity aroused by the tragic tangles of domestic life. This pity has never been more powerfully shown than in his Strange Meeting .

War Poetry by Wilfred Owen

• Strange Meeting
• Spring Offensive
• Dulce et Decorum est
• Anthem for Doomed Youth
• Insensibility
• Arms and the Boy
• The Dead-Beat
• Soldier’s Dream

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An Essay on War

As I do nearly every night, I will sweep the floor when my mother dies. I will miss her and not call her and little will change, like the not calling. Every night I think of her and don't call because the thinking is soothing and the calling is not. I sweep the floor and think about what I've been asked to write, an essay on war.                                        _________ "Most of us have not been to war," I begin, "yet certain photographs make us remember what never happened to us. Either our imaginations are marked or no longer our own." Dust dwelling in corners deforms what I think of as an edge. There is the wall, and there, alongside it, trails the dust, stubborn, unrelenting. There— a boy asleep on the beach, a girl turned into flame. In my mind I am at war with images, my mother brazenly unsmiling in a photograph until the end of time. Her mouth's dark red, a terrible ellipsis. Now, awed by the body in time, she dons a smile rinsed out like an absence. I hate poetry. I hate art. One broad sweep, and still the house will not be cleaned. My floors. My nighttime habits. I write without experience: "Dying is a fact few of us can bear."                                        _________ My mother is dying and we pretend nothing will happen. There is the onslaught. Tiny particles of my children proliferate . . . our breakfast crumbs, my grief, the nothing that scatters across the room, that won't be swept away. I try to not burn the toast. I try to not bend to abstraction, this page torn out of nothing. What did you pluck out of the tree? What did you put in your mouth? My mother, who is dying, tells me to lock the doors and windows. Winter is coming. Every house is a target. I live in a house with a writing desk. As a child, H's mother, barely escaping the war, left everthing behind—a well-stocked kitchen, the first books she read in English. She held onto her small self, her only baggage, covetously, terrified in the backseat of a stranger's car barreling toward a border. Now in America my mother is dying. She is scared of deer, snakes, caterpillars, rats, and some men. And windows and doors. I no longer know where she puts the broom, if she sweeps the house or answers the phone.                                        _________ Who made this mess? I write, "The mother of all wars is inside ourselves: I cannot decide whether to speak or stay silent, or I speak only ineffectual words, the crackling sounds that trees make on a windy night?" The season changes; again nothing is coming out of my mouth. I read a poem about a family photograph, the son long gone, the mother years into a second language, second life. Her hair is a black wave in a black ocean. I write, "Why do we not think of this as an image of war?" The daughters look nothing alike. I am leaving the door open, the windows unlatched. I sweep the floor as my children sleep, I sweep out the leaves they've carried into the house, every corner the dust, the dust, the dust. My mother was born in a war, outlasted wars I studied and wars I never heard of. Never saw. My whole life.

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• March 11, 2023

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“An Essay on War & The Death of Socrates” originally appeared in The Georgia Review, Volume LXXV, No. 2 (Summer 2021), © 2021 by The University of Georgia / © 2021 by Jennifer Chang. Reprinted by permission of Jennifer Chang and The Georgia Review.

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Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity and Some Say the Lark , which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2012 and 2022 , The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry , and the Yale Review . She co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, serves as poetry editor of New England Review , and teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. Her third book of poems, An Authentic Life , is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2024.

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Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Finding the classics in World War I poetry

Greek and Roman Antiquity in First World War Poetry: Making Connections

The commentaries illuminate relationships between the poems and attitudes to the war at the time, in the immediate post-war years, and subsequently. They also probe how individual poems reveal various facets of the poetry of unease, the poetry of survival, and the poetics of war and ecology.

• By Lorna Hardwick , Stephen Harrison , and Elizabeth Vandiver
• May 7 th 2024

It is a paradox that interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome has increased at the same time that the extent of detailed knowledge about Greece, Rome, and the associated languages has declined. This affects perceptions about antiquity in the public imagination and among creative writers. Readers and new writers have many different starting points that shape how they first encounter the ancient texts and their receptions. Oxford Classical Reception Commentaries focus on the interactions between ancient texts and how they have been read and reworked across time, place, and language. We the editors have started from the premise that analysis of close textual relationships both enriches and is enriched by further ways of creating and describing connections—for example, through perceptions about figures such as Achilles; through associations generated by mediating literature and art; through the intense pressures of contexts and the lived experience of writers, readers, and scholars. All these can turn a low-level generalised awareness into a heightened perception of the continuing creative force of ancient cultures in the modern world.

The pivotal role of classical connections in World War I poetry shaped our choice for the first phase of OCRC , which will be in print and online. The poetry that emerged from the battlefields of the First World War influenced how that war was regarded at the time and subsequently. The commentaries offer insights into the many-faceted poetry of unease associated with WWI, an unease that ranged from fear of fear itself to challenges to the political and ethical rationales associated with the war. The poetics of unease co-existed with the poetry of survival, which was also multi-faceted, encoding strategies for living in the moment as well as for coping with trauma.

We have chosen to focus on four poets, all of whom died in the war: Rupert Brooke, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Wilfred Owen, and Isaac Rosenberg. All produced fine and memorable poems that continue to be read and appreciated today. All made distinctive use of classical material. They differed considerably in education and class background. Brooke and Sorley received a classical education in the elite schools of the time. Owen received a ‘middling’ education and tried to acquire some Latin. Rosenberg, the only non-officer among the four, was from a poor family, had limited education, and did not read Latin or Greek, but as an autodidact acquired an extensive knowledge of literature in English. Mapping how their poems interacted with classical material therefore entails a considerable range of connections. The commentaries also discuss how the chosen poets engaged with earlier texts in English and how their work in turn influenced other writers (e.g., Brooke and W. B. Yeats; Rosenberg, Pound and Douglas; Owen and Longley). In the commentaries on individual poems, we have not hesitated to experiment with a range of approaches and to ‘stretch’ the boundaries of conventional analysis of classical receptions.

Rupert Brooke’s small war output includes one of the most cited poems of WWI. His sonnet ‘The Soldier’, which begins ‘If I should die, think only this of me’, is still studied in schools and universities; this is despite its young author’s naïve enthusiasm for the combat which he was never really to experience (he died of an infected insect bite en route to the Gallipoli campaign in northwest Turkey), much criticised in later commentary. It was published in The Times and read aloud in St Paul’s Cathedral as a public promotion of positivity about the war and the new front opening up in the East.

Our commentary shows for the first time that this famous poem draws on a rich range of classical texts for its key content and even its form: the idea of fighting and being buried in a ‘foreign field’ evokes the Greek expedition to Troy and its fatal consequences for many of them, as narrated in Greek epic (Homer) and tragedy (Aeschylus), while its length and theme fit those of the brief Greek epitaphic epigram. Such echoes of the Trojan War are very fitting for a poem which imagines the author’s death in a campaign which was about to take place at Gallipoli in Turkey, very close to the site of ancient Troy where Homer’s heroes had fought each other in the Iliad , a proximity of which Brooke and his similarly educated fellow officers were fully aware.

Brooke’s sonnet had immediate impact on other war writers. There is a strong case that it influenced another famous poem of WWI, W. B. Yeats’ ‘An Irish Airman foresees his Death’ (1919). Yeats had met Brooke before the war and admired his good looks, and both poems present in the first-person ideas about dying in war—idealistic for Brooke, more fatalistic for Yeats. In particular, the opening words of Yeats’ airman (representing a real friend who was lost in the air for the then Royal Flying Corps, the future RAF ), ‘I know that I will meet my fate’, looks like a firm response to Brooke’s opening, ‘If I should die’, and the overall view of Yeats’ airman, that he has no patriotic stake in the war himself, looks like a reaction to Brooke’s nationalistic claim that his future grave will be ‘a corner of a foreign field / that is forever England’.

In a future post, we shall look at how Wilfred Owen drew on classical material to add a critical edge to his poetry. We also outline how Isaac Rosenberg’s Trench poems relate Greek and Hebrew sources to the environment of war-time Flanders.

Featured image by Jr Korpa via Unsplash

Lorna Hardwick is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University and Honorary Research Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Oxford.

Stephen Harrison is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Oxford, Senior Research Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch.

Elizabeth Vandiver is the Clement Biddle Penrose Professor of Latin and Classics, Emerita, at Whitman College. She also held visiting professorships at Northwestern University and at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome.

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WAR POETRY: Themes in War Poetry

ENGLISH G.C.S.E. COURSEWORK

Before World War One, war was seen as glorious and honourable.  These attitudes are reflected in the phrase Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mari, translated this means that it is sweet and fitting to die for your country.  It was a firm belief that everyman should fight for his country.  However, World War One changed this attitude that people had, as they had seen the effects of war on people.

Warfare before World War One was believed to be men on horses battling or men on foot with swords and shields facing the same weapons as their own from the opposition.  Over the years, technology has progressed and developed.  New weapons were introduced and implemented during warfare, tanks and helicopters were brought in and this modified the whole perception of warfare and altered the idea of war to the reality of war and how it was during a battle and on the battlefield.

In this essay, I shall be looking at the Patriotism of war, the Irony in war and the horrors of war.  I will use my social, cultural and historical knowledge and by using particular poems, I will support my idea of the attitudes changed after World War One.  For this essay I will be looking at six different poems, two for each theme I am looking at.  For the Patriotism of war, I will be using ‘The Call’ by Jessie Pope and ‘To An Athlete Dying Young’ by A.E. Houseman.  For the Irony in war, I will be using ‘The General’ by Seigfried Sassoon and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson.  For the horrors of war, I will be using ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen and ‘Mental Cases’ by Wilfred Owen.

Jessie Pope is an excellent example of pre-war poetry because she writes with very strong patriotism. She encourages people to go out and fight for their country, for glory and honour, for the king and for the people of England! Her poetry blinded the men from the horrors of the war, and gave them visions of, “banners and rolling drums”. The brave young men left England swelling with pride, sure of victory, eating the “empires thanks”, no idea that they would be crawling back, distraught, mad and in most cases, not at all.

The poem follows the same rhyme scheme in each of the three stanzas. A,B,A,B, then three lines of C and back to B. Line A is always encouraging the reader, telling them of the glory and how wonderful it is to fight, always asking who, “who’s for the trench?” in this way she is addressing the reader with a rhetorical question. Line B is a question, “would you my laddie?”, or a slight variation, again addressing the reader, almost daring them to refuse or take on a challenge. The lines of C put the reader to what they are fighting for and, dare them to be cowards.

After the war, Pope was contrasted as an unreliable source next to a first hand witness such as Owen, who wrote in direct opposition to her. She was thought a bad poetess who didn’t understand the actual truth and concept of war. But just because she had an opinion, which was opposed by witnessed of the war, she was labelled as wrong and unreliable. Pope wrote with patriotism rarely expressed by woman of that time. She was expressing her opinion, not talking about every solider on the front line.

“The soldier” is a prime example of Brookes understanding and personal outlook on the deserved sympathies of the soldiers of WW1.

The first stanza follows an A,B rhyme scheme, though occasionally using half rhymes. The second stanza follows an A,B,C rhyme scheme, only the last line is a half rhyme. The rhythm is constant and relatively slow, with the use of commas and full stops, which helps you to fully understand the meaning of each line. The title, ‘The Solider’ is meant to refer to what every soldier should feel when going into war. Although the poem expresses one mans opinion, written in the first person, it inspires people to feel the same way. Patriotism and use of language is represented by “If I should die, think only this of me:” The opening line emphasises bravery. This soldier knows that he might die and asks only that the people remember what this poem represents, “That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England...”

This is a clear representation of patriotism, that it is good and honourable to die because wherever your body lies, will become part of England and in this poem, England stands for all that is good and strong. “In that rich earth a richer dust concealed” and “blest by the suns of home” emphasises this. The first stanza also describes how England bred this solider and made him happy.

This is a preview of the whole essay

“Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,” as if to say England has always served you, it is worth to die for what make you who you are.

The main feeling portrayed in the second stanza is that you, the solider, are English, thus representing the top nation and will be eternally blessed. The lines reinforce this: “Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given.” The thoughts that England gave to you are now being given back somewhere else to honour England. As you have done this, you shall be blessed, in other words.

The poem is written with real feeling for his country. The reader is blinded from the horrors of war and at the same time filled with patriotism.

‘The General’ is a short simple poem. Siegred Sassoon uses irony in most of his poems. In this he refers to the leaders higher up in the ranks that send these men to their death, say they were “incompetent swine” and “the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead.” The overall picture the poem portrays is that of lions being led by donkeys. “But he did for them both by his plan of attack”, this suggests the same, that the Generals did not work hard enough and this is reflected by the number of soldiers who died during the war.

The rhyme scheme is used to continue the flow of a slow pace. This is to create the sadness of death. The impression created is a horrid, dull morbid atmosphere, which makes the reader understand and comprehend the times of the war.

The next poem I am going to use is, ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.  This supports ‘The General’ as they are both poems, which have an irony theme.

‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is a repetitive poem, so that it can convey a point to the reader.  It uses the sentences “Rode the six hundred” and “Into the valley of Death” repeatedly to show the mistakes of the General, even though he knew it was wrong, a mistake to let them go on.  “Someone had blundered.”

The brave soldiers who were proud to fight for their country never neither questioned nor queried the order.  “Theirs was not to make reply, Theirs was not to reason why.”  They lost their lives being respectful, in the sense that they were told to go out and fight for their country even if it meant they were to die during battle.  They did not question the General as he was of a higher status to them, they would not question the strategy he was following, even if it meant the soldiers losing their own lives.  “Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred.”

The main similarity between the two poems, ‘The General’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is that the meaning behind the poems is the same.  Its main point that, the soldiers did as they were told by the Generals without asking questions, eventually lead to their death.  The brave soldiers died during the battle because the Generals with their status and power lead did not do their jobs properly and as a result the soldiers lost their lives.  The main difference in the poems is the length of them, ‘The General’ is a much shorter poem in comparison to the ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.

The last theme I will be looking at in this essay is that of Horror and how it is conveyed to the reader through the language used and the imagery the poet wants the reader to create in their minds as they read the poems.  I will be using two poems called, ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and ‘Mental Cases’ both of which are written by Willfred Owen.

When looking at ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’, there are signs of rhythm, rhyme, imagery and a theme with suitable language, which enables the reader to visualise the poem.  The A,B rhyme scheme, use of commas, semi colons and long sentences are all used to slow down the pace of the first stanza.  This is changed in the second stanza as the soldiers are trying to survive, the pace quickens, and this atmosphere is created with the use of small words and short sentences.  Which is done through the first line, which has small words and exclamation marks which quickens the pace “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling”.  With this quote it is also possible to see the change in pace that the soldiers had to face, the gas bombs were upon them, they had seconds to react to protect themselves.  The change of pace is echoed simultaneously with the change of imagery that Owen is creating, so the reader can sense the soldiers’ urgency.  The change in the pace of the language reflects the mood of the poem, enabling the reader to be drawn into the theme of war and especially the horrors of war that the soldiers faced.

The poem contains similes, such as “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”, describing the effects of the gas on a young soldiers face.  Metaphors are also included, such as “incurable sores on innocent tongues” describing the effects of the gas attack on the innocent soldiers who wanted to serve for their country, not knowing that this was how they were going to die.  The similes and metaphors have been included to engage the reader within the poem.  The imagery created is engrossing the reader making them feel that they are actually witnessing this particular horror of war, the gas attack described in the poem.  

This poem is focusing on the young soldiers who are faced with the horrors of war, which are not witnessed or endured by the people who do not serve for their country.  The effects of this are aging the soldiers, “like old beggars”.  Personification is also used which involves the reader more actively in the poem by creating visual imagery, so they can try and feel the suffering of the soldiers was like.  “Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”  The words used by the poet are very visual allowing imagery to be created instantly, as the lines are read.  

The language used in the lines of the poem create an atmosphere of unpleasantness for the reader, it reflects regret as so many “innocent” lives are lost in the war.  A good example of a similie, which reflects this is, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud”.  The life out on the battlefield and in the trenches was very different to what the young, enthusiastic soldiers expected.  This was because a completely different picture was painted for them to encourage them to be patriotic and want to serve their country in battle.  Owen uses a lot of similes, metaphors and personification in this poem, to try and communicate to the reader, what conditions and horrors the soldiers faced, which they probably had not expected.  They had to try and survive through although most did not and many watched as fellow soldiers, their friends died, while they were helpless in stopping the suffering of the horrors that war brought along with the battles.

Owen makes the reader feel like they are actually witnessing the events of the gas attacks by creating imagery for the reader through the language he uses. He wants us to try and imagine what the soldiers witnessed and felt.  “In all my dreams, before my helpless sight”, with these words he is portraying a haunting image that the soldiers would never even have dreamt of seeing, now confronted with these scenes they are utterly helpless and cannot aid the suffering soldiers.  “guttering, choking, drowning.” Is an image of what is happening to the soldier, his skin is melting because of the gas bombs.  They were injured in the attack because they were not alter enough to react quick enough as they were, “Drunk with fatigue”.  “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks” this refers to the once young and healthy soldiers who have altered due to the amount of weight that they have to carry all the time.  One of the aspects that they were not made aware of was the effect the weight would have on their backs.  

The poet addresses readers in his poem with, “My friend”, he is directing the following lines to the reader so now he has changed the focus of his poem.  At first the reader has been invited and consumed into the poem through the language, pace and imagery used.  Now towards the end of the final stanza the reader is addressed directly with the words, “you would not tell such high zest  To children ardent for some desperate glory”.  He has described some of the images that the soldiers witness to the reader, inviting them to imagine the scenes they saw.  Now with the quote he is saying that after knowing what suffering and horrors the soldiers experience, you would not lie to children who want some of the glory of fighting for their country, without knowing the true consequences and horrors of war so they too can suffer what has only been described and not actually felt.    

This poem by Owen is a very good example of portraying images of horror.  The language used and the imagery which is created with this language and the pace set allows the reader to witness, from a very safe distance some of the glory attached to war. It is about an incident that the soldiers face.

After analysing Mental Cases, I noticed that there was no particular evidence of rhythm or a rhyme scheme within the poem. The poet may have done this on purpose to reflect the instability of the soldiers’ lives during the war.  The lack of rhythm and rhyme could be to portrait the life of the soldiers during the war, as their life had become the same day in, day out, with the marching and the fighting.

The poet has increased the amount of imagery included in the poem, so the reader is able to visualise and experience how the soldiers may have lived during the war.  This may also be done to see what it would have been like and why they would have become mentally unstable due to the images, sounds and horrors they faced with everyday.

“Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,” this means that the soldiers are sitting in the dark, waiting for battle. “Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?”  These two sentences are used to show the tiredness of the soldiers after they sit awake, day and night waiting to be called for battle. “Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,” The words ‘slow panic’ are used to describe the duration of the war, this is also a metaphor, Owen uses plenty of these and also similes such as “Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.” And “Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?” “Fretted sockets?” is used to describe the appearance of their eyes, almost as though they’re sunken, because of their lack of rest and sleep. “Sleeping and walk hell; but who these hellish?” These questions, who are they? Who lives like that? These soldiers do nothing except from sleep for a short while and march through the hell that is called war.

All these descriptions of war are used to explain and illustrate how the soldiers lived and why they became mentally ill. Every small thing about how the soldiers lived contributed to their condition making it worse, causing them to deteriorate and force them to become mentally insane.

“These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished,” The minds of soldiers who keep on having flashbacks of other dead soldiers have starved – ravished. These horrific images are always in their minds, forcing them to constantly reflect about them, making them go insane. “Multitudinous murders they once witnessed,” The deaths of the fellow soldiers they have seen are memories, which also cause flashbacks, making the soldiers persistently think about the horror in which they witnessed.

“Always they must see these things and hear them, Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles, Carnage incomparable, and human squander Rucked too thick for these men’s’ extrication.” The last four sentences in the second stanza indicate what the soldiers hear and see everyday, the reality of war and not what it was depicted to them.

“Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.” This is the face of the dead soldiers that spin round in their heads. They are haunted by the images of the dead. “Thus their hands are plucking at each other;” This shows the soldiers are fidgeting and shows that their minds are becoming unstable because of all the images and scenes they have witnessed. “Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging; Snatching after us who smote them, brother, Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.” These previous three lines are to conclude the poem by saying that someone should confront the people who sent them to this misery and give them these images and madness these soldiers have to live with.  The word ‘brother’ is used in the second line, this is used to refer and talk to that someone who ‘dealt’ – convinced them to go and endure all this madness - dealing with the sights and smells the soldiers have seen.

The poem concentrates on the effects of war on the soldiers, the reality is that, they have to endure all the images that they are left with. The effect it has on them they are left mentally disturbed as a result of fighting in the war.

In conclusion it is possible to learn that the poets whom I have looked at have different ways in portraying war.  This was made clear to me when I looked and analysised there work. The different themes can change and effect the way war is portrayed, for example, famous poets such as Wilfred Owen could influence poems becoming well known and therefore attitudes against war welfare could change as the theme of the poem which is written is more known of. It is possible to say poems famous of the time greatly influenced the way people saw and thought of the war, this is significant as the poets deliberately expressed feelings against war in this attitude.

In many poems, the poets deliberately question and address the reader, making them feel somewhat involved even thought they were not there to experience war first hand. This is done primarily to influence the reader’s opinion of the war and to greaten their knowledge of warfare through their own experience or personal opinions.

The message given from poems is still somewhat relevant; this is as we remember the lives of all the soldiers still today. However, the message cannot be seen as important as it would have been at the end of World War One as the war does not have a big control on the way we live or even the way we see it now.  

Document Details

• Word Count 3399
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• Level AS and A Level
• Subject English

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War Poetry: Poets’ Attitudes Towards War Expository Essay

Introduction, works cited.

People always express their views about contemporary issues in the society in different ways. For example, some people express their views by writing articles, giving speeches, and debating on various issues. Poems can also be used as a means of conveying ones feelings and attitudes about a given event or issue in a more passionate manner.

This is because the use of figures of speech in poetry makes the message being conveyed more clear and interesting to the audience. This paper will discuss the different attitudes adopted by four poets towards war.

“The Charge of the Light Brigade” is a poem that talks about the Crimean war. This war took place from 1853 to 1856. During this war, Britain and its allies fought against the Russians.

And much of the conflict took place in the Crimean Peninsula. The Battle of Balaclava was one of the popular events that took place during the war. The Russians were so amazed by the great courage demonstrated by the British Light Brigade, to an extent that they did not feel humiliated by the defeat. They instead blamed it on an error that was made by an army official.

The poet presents a glorifying perspective of the war by using an interesting beat, and narration about a noble heroism. The poet has also used a lot of imagery and metaphors in explaining the tragic events that Brigade experienced.

Further more, the tone of the poem has been developed using figures of speech. However, this poem has some contradictions. This is because it conveys a sense of glory and honor, and at the same time it talks about war and defeat (Probst 75).

“Concord Hymn” is a poem that was recited in Concord in 1837 to commemorate the role that was played by the people who lived in Concord in the “Battle of Concord Lexington”. This war took place during the American Revolution. This poem refers to the continuous struggle that North American colonies underwent in order to be emancipated from the British domination.

The poet has recognized the great determination of the Americans when they fought against the British. The poet has presented a mixture of somber and joyous mood in the poem. This makes the poem relevant to the ceremony which was meant to commemorate the war.

In the poem, the raising of flag symbolizes the great honoring of the people who died during the war and it also encourages the people who survived to continue fighting for more freedom. Although the language used in the poem is quite complicated, it is however a good way of expressing the important ideals of nationalism (Emmerson 4).

The poem “The Man He Killed” talks about meaningless nature of war, in which a soldier killed another simply on the basis that they were fighting on different fronts. The first verse suggests that the two soldiers hated each because of war and had they met elsewhere they could have been good friends.

The use of repetition in the poem is meant to justify the action of the soldier who killed his colleague because they were enemies. The narrator in this poem is trying to say that the action he took was unavoidable. The theme of the poem reveals the strange nature of war in which people are compelled to kill each other for no good reasons.

The use of conversation tone in the poem gives the impression that the soldier is trying to make us understand and accept his action. The language that was used in this poem is simple and easy to understand (Hardy 67). From the poem we learn that war affects the good relationship that people have.

The poem “Dulce ET Decorum Est” was written by Wilfred Owen who served as a captain in the British military. His aim for writing this poem was to show his disapproval of the notions about nationalism that were often spread by journalists.

He has the feeling that war is so terrible and against humanity. He also expressed his negative feelings a bout the impacts of war in the society and also on the soldiers (Kerr 18).

The above analyses of the four poems indicate the different attitudes of the poets towards war. However, Wilfred Owen in his poem “Dulce ET Decorum Est” has the most powerful sentiments a bout war. This is because he has used many strong poetic devices to show the brutal and horrifying nature of war experiences.

For example alliteration has been to make the poem easy to recite and memorize. Unlike the other poets, he has used his personal experience in war to show the effects of war on people and the soldiers. For example, he says that some soldiers are always brutally killed and they do not even get decent burials (Kerr 89).

Apart from this, their relatives suffer after losing their loved ones. Last but more importantly, Owen has tried to give a true account of the nature of war in contrast to the other poets who give justifications for war by talking about its glorification and honor.

Emmerson, Ralph. The concord hymn and other poems. New York: Dover Publishers, 1996. Print.

Hardy, Thomas. Penguin classics. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. Print.

Kerr, Wilfred. The works of Wilfred Owen. Hertfordshire: Words Worth, 1999. Print.

Probst, Robert. Response and analysis: teaching literature in secondary school . New York: Heinemann, 2004. Print.

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1. IvyPanda . "War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War." March 31, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/.

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IvyPanda . "War Poetry: Poets' Attitudes Towards War." March 31, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/english-discussion-board-post/.

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