Poetry of the First World War

[seaJane]

I haven't bought myself this anthology yet but one of the things Prof. Kendall has done is trawl through contemporary papers for the material that was printed there long before the famous war poets made it into the public consciousness.

There's an interesting discussion here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28705819

[IanA]

I think we know Hardy's feelings -

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome

Arose the howl of wakened hounds:

The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,

The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;

It’s gunnery practice out at sea

Just as before you went below;

The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make

Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters

They do no more for Christés sake

Than you who are helpless in such matters.

“That this is not the judgment-hour

For some of them’s a blessed thing,

For if it were they’d have to scour

Hell’s floor for so much threatening....

“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when

I blow the trumpet (if indeed

I ever do; for you are men,

And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. “I wonder,

Will the world ever saner be,”

Said one, “than when He sent us under

In our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.

“Instead of preaching forty year,”

My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,

“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,

Roaring their readiness to avenge,

As far inland as Stourton Tower,

And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

[Glen Delvine]

Thank you seaJane for the interesting link...........although I'm not a big poetry fan, as a school pupil my awareness of WW1 came about through poetry study in English and not through the History class!

[David Ridgus]

I haven't bought myself this anthology yet but one of the things Prof. Kendall has done is trawl through contemporary papers for the material that was printed there long before the famous war poets made it into the public consciousness.

There's an interesting discussion here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28705819

Interesting stuff seaJane.

Following a Forum discussion with you and Michael Bully many moons ago I changed the way I taught war poetry. I now teach poems from the very start of the war (Jessie Pope etc), then the poet soldiers (Brooke) then and only then the soldier poets. I round it off with poems written after the Armistice. Students have been very receptive to the changing mood of the poems and it has led to some quite vigorous disagreements over individual poems (The Spirit by Woodbine Willie being the main example - was this Pope or Owen's view of the Tommy?). I shall certainly be sharing this article with them next term.

Thanks for provoking my thoughts then and now

David

[seaJane]

Gosh, I hadn't realised I'd had such an effect. But all praise to you for acting on it!