This particular edition provides an excellent range of footnotes to put many of the particular poems of Owen's into context.

On New Year's Eve 1917, Owen wrote: "I go out of this year a Poet, my dear Mother, as which I did not enter it. I am held peer by the Georgians; I am a poet's poet."

Nearly a century later, time has proven him write and he still speaks to many of us. Most of us are familiar with his poem "Dulce et Decorum est." In some ways, I do feel a pity that we don't look to his work very often except for his unflinching observations of war that serve as ample evidence for the condemnation of conflict. He has poems such as "The Little Mermaid," a 624-line epic that is quite readable, and shows some great influence by Keats, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Spenser and Shelley, especially "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Had he survived, might we regard him a significant speculative poet?

This collection allows us to ponder where he was going with fragments such as "An Imperial Elegy" or "The Wrestlers," regarding Hercules and other figures of Greek myth.

Owen penned poems such a "The Rime Of The Youthful Mariner," "O World of Many Worlds" and "Who Is The God of Canongate?" and while one has to account for the poetic tastes of the time and the importance of rhyme, there's much that remains readable and worth reading.

Such time has passed that one day I hope he'll be regarded as the multidimensional poet he was. He was a solider, he was a poet, he was a voice lost ahead of his time who still speaks to ours.