Literary The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by crich70

A Treasury of War Poetry British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917
http://www.amazon.com/Treasury-Briti...+War+1914-1917

I missed participating in this discussion last year - too busy at work at the time. Poetry isn't something that I actively seek to read, but the war poetry has really captivated me. I enjoyed this collection of poems by Sassoon. The bitterness wasn't off-putting for me and just reinforced the raw emotions that soldiers must have felt. It wasn't all roses and glory fighting for the homeland, no matter what side you were on, and I think it's this universal emotion which draws me in. I find Sassoon's personal history interesting, and it's surprising he wasn't court-martialed for his anti-war opinions and instead was promoted and eventually returned to the front. His work inspired me to read other collections by Graves, Owen and Brooke which I listed in my order of preference.

The main reason I decided to post was that I wanted to recommend the book that crich70 provided a link to on Amazon (it is public domain and free in the US!). I really enjoyed the variety. The poems presented a more patriotic and romantic perspective of war, a nice contrast to Sassoon's poetry. The description from Goodreads is below.

1919. Includes selections of verse by noted poets such as: Maurice Hewlett; Neil Munro; Hilaire Belloc; George Herbert Clarke; Christopher Morley; Thomas Hardy; John Galsworthy; Sir A. Conan Doyle; Vachel Lindsay; Sara Teasdale; Poets Militant; The Airmen; The Wounded; The Fallen; and many others.

I would love to know if anyone has any other multi-author collections of war poetry to recommend. Please share!

[issybird]

I have my ancient paperback, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, which I see is available in Kindle as linked. I'm not saying it's the best and it's certainly not the most comprehensive, but it gives a good overview and is nice for dipping into.

[Rizla]

Graves and Sasoon fell out because, in his war memoir, Graves recounted how Sasoon took a machine gun nest, sat in it for a while and read poetry, then marched back to his line, and the Germans retook it. The guy was wild. For some reason, Sasoon didnt want it revealed. Both men's memoirs are impressive. IMO both men were better in prose than verse. I think that maybe Graves is the last great English novelist. I dont know anything that has matched I Claudius. Tolkien is better of course, but he was born in South Africa

[Rizla]

The only American memoir I can think of that IMO matches the lyricism of Graves and Sasoon is One of Our Bombers Is Missing by Dan Brennan. Yet nowhere seems to have heard of it. It's WWII btw.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by issybird

I have my ancient paperback, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, which I see is available in Kindle as linked. I'm not saying it's the best and it's certainly not the most comprehensive, but it gives a good overview and is nice for dipping into.

Thanks! I have the Penguin Book of First World War Short Stories which is a good variety. I'll have to check out the poetry equivalent.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I found a great collection that seems a bargain at $8.83 for the wealth of information inside! The Winter Of The World: Poems Of The Great War edited by Dominic Hibberd, who appears to be a recognized authority on war poetry and also wrote a biography of Wilfred Owen. It was published in Oct 2013. It is arranged by year rather than theme. There is a very lengthy introduction about war poetry. Then each year has a brief description of important war events. What I really like is that every poem has an explanation about where it was published and other notes about the author, why they wrote the poem, definitions of special words or places in the poem for better context, etc.

Here is the description on Amazon.

Spoiler:

This new anthology brings together 270 poems and is the most complete and authoritative ever compiled. Arranged by year rather than by poet, it is the first to reveal how poetry developed between 1914 and 1918, and afterwards from 1919 - 1930.

The poetry that came out of the First World War exposed, for the first time in history, the real horror of war. The result is an extraordinary record of passionate feelings and appalling experiences, written by men and women from widely different backgrounds, of unique and enduring importance.

All the major poets are generously represented, Owen, Brooke, Sassoon, Blunden, Gurney, Graves and Rosenberg, but here too are many unfamiliar yet remarkable poems from the less familiar, Joseph Leftwich, F S Flint, 'Touchstone'; female poets: Edith Sitwell; Vera Brittain, Eleanor Farjeon; and writers not always associated with WWI poetry, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and Ezra Pound.

Accompanying notes to the poems, historical events and the poets give precise, relevant information and suggest links to other poems, so the book as a whole forms a fascinating, moving narrative.

Praise for Poetry of the Great War: An Anthology:

'This splendid anthology...immaculately crafted...wide and authorative...[is] recommended unhesitatingly to both a popular and academic readership. Choice, USA

Praise for Wilfred Owen: A New Biography:

'Rich, compelling, formidably researched.' John Carey, Sunday Times

[Bookpossum]

That sounds like a really interesting and useful anthology, Bookworm_Girl. I'll look out for it.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I found a great collection that seems a bargain at $8.83 for the wealth of information inside! The Winter Of The World: Poems Of The Great War

I suspect I won't be able to resist this. Thank you, I think!

[fantasyfan]

Originally Posted by issybird

I have my ancient paperback, The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, which I see is available in Kindle as linked. I'm not saying it's the best and it's certainly not the most comprehensive, but it gives a good overview and is nice for dipping into.

I have that one too. I found it an excellent introduction to that particular area.

What i particularly liked was a print version of the handwritten script of Owen's "Strange Meeting" showing how rough a copy that poem was at his death.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I discovered this great Oxford website, The First World War Digital Poetry Archive.
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research.

The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by a comprehensive range of multimedia artefacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources. These educational resources include an exciting new exhibition in the three-dimensional virtual world Second Life.

Freely available to the public as well as the educational community, the First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a significant resource for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired.

[Bookpossum]

WOW! Thank you very much Bookworm_Girl.

[paola]

Bookworm girl you are a treasure trove!

[Bookworm_Girl]

I found this book which looks very interesting too. The Red Sweet Wine of Youth: The Brave and Brief Lives of the War Poets by Nicholas Murray.

The poetry that emerged from the trenches of WWI is a remarkable body of work, at once political manifesto and literary beacon for the twentieth century. In this passionate recreation of the lives of the greatest poets to come out of the conflict, Nicholas Murray brilliantly reveals the men themselves as well as the struggle of the artist to live fully and to bear witness in the annihilating squalor of battle. Bringing into sharp focus the human detail of each life, using journals, letters and literary archives, Murray brings to life the men's indissoluble comradeship, their complex sexual mores and their extraordinary courage. Poignant, vivid and unfailingly intelligent, Nicholas Murray's study offers new and finely tuned insight into the - often devastatingly brief - lives of a remarkable generation of men.

[BelleZora]

Thanks, Bookworm_Girl.

It looks very interesting. I found these reviews from The Telegraph and The Independent.

Here's an interesting blog: http://war-poets.blogspot.com/2011/0...-of-youth.html

The reviews and blog posts are really interesting. I think that this is book I must read.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thanks, BelleZora! I will read those links. I just accidentally stumbled upon it while looking for another book.