Selected Poems and Letters

by Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg has long been regarded as one of the most important artistic figures of the First World War. Poems such as ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ and ‘Break of Day in the Trenches’ have been included in every significant war anthology and have earned him a place in Poets’ Corner. He studied at the Slade School of Art at the same time as Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler, showing promise as a painter. His poverty, education and background made him an outsider, yet it was just that experience which equipped him to cope with the unforeseen horror of war in the ‘I am determined that this war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not master my poeting.’ Inexplicably for such a major figure, Rosenberg’s work has been out of print for many years. In this Selected Poems and Letters, his biographer Jean Liddiard has made a substantial selection of his finest poems and most revealing letters, providing also an authoritative introduction and a detailed chronology.

180 pages, Hardcover

First published July 14, 2004

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

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a man I discovered in my downstairs loo, lurking as he was in the pages of an anthology. Enjoying poetry as I do I was amazed I had never heard of his writing before but he was of course one of the men cut down in 1918 towards the end of 'The Great War'. Liddiard gives a short introduction to his life and shows him to be a man of extraordinary talent not just as a poet thought that cannot be denied but also as a painter and indeed the cover picture is one of his self portraits. It is probabl;y quite pointless to try to read what type of man he was into that picture though it makes for interesting speculation but it is in his beautiful poetry that you encounter a man of great insight, of courage and of quiet desolation. The self portrait expressed to me arrogance and a sneering quality which was quite unattractive and yet that is not what I found in the poetry. Whether that says more about my ability as a portrait reader or of Rosenberg's ability as an artist i could not say but read his poetry and, if not weep, than certainly swallow down emotions of admiration and sadness.

there is great humour here even in amidst the horror as when he writes of louse hunting and how he and his comrades strip off their clothes and seek to shake the lice away and kill them

'then we all sprang up and stript
to hunt the verminous brood.
Soon like a demons'pantomime
the place was raging
.....
see the merry limbs in hot highland fling
because some wizard vermin
charmed from the quiet this revel'

Even though he fights alongside other men in the trenches he encounters prejudice and alieniation

'The blonde, the bronze, the ruddy,
with the same heaving blood,
keep tide to the moon of Moses,
Then why do they sneer at me ? '

He writes of the loss of hope and beauty in poems some of which seem as if dragged unwillingly from his heart and others thrown out with the force of a trumpet blast. Re-reading that sentence I almost feel i should apologize for it sounds forced or false but i let it stand because it expresses what his poetry achieves in me.

there is also heartbreaking beauty in small images of love

'your body is a star
unto my thought.
But stars are not too far
and can be caught -
small pools their prisons are '

For some reason i found that image unbelievably moving.

I will not continue to quote him as once started in a review of a poetry book that I admire i could just continue on and on but if you love poetry and if, like me, you had never encountered this poet before than seek him out. He is so worth the search.