Breaking The Code To The Catcher In The Rye: Poetry

[Cosmic]

Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology


This is a review from http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-First-Wo...

The 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War 1 is officially July 28, the day Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and attacked, in retribution for the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and Archduchess Sophie in Sarajevo by a Serbian teenager. By the time the war ended, more than 70 million military personnel had been involved; more than nine million combatants were dead; and the German, Austrian, Ottoman, and Russian ruling families were swept from power.

It seems odd to associate poetry with war, but it is a fact that no war is more connected to poetry that World War I. And for that we mostly have the English to thank.

From 1914 to 1918, poetry went to war. But it went to war in all its possible permutations – jingoistic nationalism; nostalgia for a world being fought for even as it passed away; the cynical response of the men in the trenches to their incompetent generals; the mourning of civilians; pacifism and opposition to the war; and the reflection of what it all meant, or didn’t mean, years after the war was over.

The poets we usually associate with World War I are those who died in the conflict – Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), and possibly Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). These are the ones who usually show up in the high school and college English textbooks. But as Tim Kendall points out in “The Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology,” the number of poets involved was far greater than the handful represented in the texts. They came from the upper classes, middle class and working class.

Novelist Thomas Hardy, for example, wrote poems about the war from the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 to the armistice in November 1918. So did Rudyard Kipling, who lost his son John at age 18 in the Battle of Loos.

And it wasn’t only poets who went to war; men in the trenches read poetry. In fact, Kendall says, the most commonly read book by soldiers in the trenches was A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, possibly because of the feelings the long poem evoked about the England being fought for.
And after the war, it was largely the poets who framed Britain’s understanding of what had happened and why.

The anthology includes some wonderful poetry, and it’s difficult to limit a choice of favorites to one or two or a handful. Here is one by Rosenberg, who grew up in Whitechapel in London’s East End and was torn between being a painter or a poet until the war arrived:

Break of Day in the Trenches

The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe—
Just a little white with the dust.

And there’s Edward Thomas (1878-1917), considered something of a hack writer, Kendall says, until he developed a friendship with and received encouragement from Robert Frost. His first book of poetry was being prepared for publication when Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras. This is his poem “The Private:”

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
"At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,
"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.

Two other favorites are Robert Service’s “Only a Boche” and Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth.”

Kendall, professor of English at Exeter University, is a poet, biographer and literary critic, having publishing works on Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, Paul Muldoon, war poetry, and 20th century British and Irish poetry. He also has a blog entitled War Poetry. In “The Poetry of World War I,” Kendall has created a remarkable anthology. The introductory essay alone is worth the price of the book. The poems included have been selected with care and insight (and are annotated), and each poet receives a succinct introduction. He also includes music-hall and trench songs such as “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” because even the songs sung by soldiers had poetic influence.

When I finished this deeply satisfying anthology, having read and reread many of the poems, I better understood why this war was so infused with poetry. These are poems that came from the mud, the blood, the lice, and the tedium of war in the trenches, a tedium interrupted by occasional shellings and horrific battles. And these poems came from the witnessing of friends and comrades dying, often painfully so, and even understanding that the deaths of enemy soldiers was in a way the death of themselves.

This war changed everything, sweeping away what once was and what never could be restored. And poetry was there to express it and record it.

[Cosmic]

hen I was teaching, one of my favorite assignments each year was when we got to “World War 1”. Each year we would dig “trenches” and my students would sit in them and write what I called “trench poems.” We would do the assignment after studying the poetry of “World War 1”. I have long believed that some of the richest and most over looked poetry of the last century came out of “The Great War”. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I loved “Poetry of the First World War” compiled and edited by Tim Kendall.

The poems in this anthology are intensely personal. Often you feel as if you are with them in the mud, barbed wire, fogs of chemicals, and rotting corpses. The anthology is a definitive work and contains all the great poets of the time, including Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen,, Rupert Brooke and Ivor Gurney.

This is a great gift and should be on the shelves of anyone who considers themselves a poetry lover or history buff.

[Cosmic]

I didn't know that poetry was a big part of war history! I didn't grow up with very much poetry. I am looking forward to reading these poems.

Allie had a glove that he wrote poems on because he was catching bullets in the trenches. That is what the second review of this book reminded me of.

[Cosmic]

Here is another poet from WW1.

Siegfried Sassoon
http://www.poemhunter.com/siegfried-s...
http://www.poemhunter.com/siegfried-s...

[Cosmic]

MASTERS OF WAR

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.
Like Judas of old You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.
And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead.------- Bob Dylan 1963