The collected poems of Isaac Rosenberg

by Isaac Rosenberg

Edited by Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding. With a Foreward by Siegfried Sassoon. An English Jewish Poet killed in World War I.

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Isaac Rosenberg is widely recognised as one of the finest English poets of the First World War. Born into a working class Jewish family, at the age of seven Rosenberg moved from Bristol to a strongly Jewish area of East London. At fourteen he left school to become an apprentice engraver, but at the outbreak of the Great War he was living in South Africa with his sister in the hope that a warm climate would do his chronic bronchitis some good. Critical of the war from the outset, he nevertheless joined up in 1915. He was killed near the Somme on the Western Front in 1918.
He is currently commemorated as one of 16 Great War Poets in Westminster Abbey.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst I am by no means a big poetry reader, I have recently been working my way through a set of books:'Poets of the Great War' (Owen, Sassoon er al) - but until a fellow 'Goodreader' pointed me in the direction of Rosenberg (for which I am extremely grateful) I freely admit that I had not until now heard of his work (shame on me).

Isaac Rosenberg said that he "never joined the army for patriotic reasons" going on to state that: "nothing can justify war" and that "I suppose we must fight to get the trouble over". Tragically Rosenberg lost his life due to the hostilities in March 1918.

Whilst the poetry of Rosenberg might possibly not be as well-known (although maybe that's just me?) or as revered as that of Owen or Sassoon, nor perhaps have quite the same immediate and obvious power - there are many in this Rosenberg collection that have an undeniable emotional impact, a lyricism and are truly haunting - and they stay with the reader. Rosenberg's approach is, I think a more subtle and understated one than perhaps some of his 'Great War Poet' peers.

The pieces that stayed with me as being the strongest from this collection we're:

Returning, we hear the larks
The Dead Heroes
The Dying Soldier
The Immortals
Wan, fragile faces of joy
In War
Break of day in the trenches
Louse Hunting
From France
Dead Mans Dump
On Receiving news of the war
In The Trenches
The Ballad of Whitechapel
A Careless Heart
Home- thoughts from France
Killed in Action
My Days

For anyone reading the poets of the Great War - Rosenberg is one definitely one not to be overlooked.

[Marg Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of us read Owen, Brooke, & Sassoon if we want to touch on WWI poetry so their peer, this lesser-read Jewish working class British war poet, is a revelation. “Break of Day in the Trenches” has been called the greatest single poem the war produced. The classical and English literary heritage that was the unquestioned possession of an Anglican establishment poet such as Brooke is less available or relevant to Rosenberg, which may account for his relative neglect