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war poetry
Oct. 17th, 2013 01:08 am notes
What is War Poetry?
-writings in time of and on the subject of war
-young soldier poets of the First World War established war poetry as a literary genre.
-as a way of striving to express extreme emotion at the very edge of experience
-is not necessarily ‘anti-war’; it's about the very large questions of life: identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty, courage, compassion, humanity, duty, desire, death
-poets whose work appeared between 1914 and 1918 were not involved in fighting. The Times supplement, War Poems, August, 1914–15, for example, included contributions from established civilian poets such as Robert Bridges, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Binyon, and Thomas Hardy
-First World War trench poetry was a unique phenomenon whereby testimony and poetry were yoked together, both registering new forms of violence, and the war-torn male body was the central subject; set against the abstract language of heroism, and became the ground of protest.
-twentieth century produced poets who sometimes chose to concentrate their writing on the horrifying effects of war on civilians
What is War Poetry?
"There’s things in war one dare not tell poor father sitting safe at home. "
-Siegfried Sassoon
-Siegfried Sassoon
-writings in time of and on the subject of war
-young soldier poets of the First World War established war poetry as a literary genre.
-as a way of striving to express extreme emotion at the very edge of experience
-is not necessarily ‘anti-war’; it's about the very large questions of life: identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty, courage, compassion, humanity, duty, desire, death
-poets whose work appeared between 1914 and 1918 were not involved in fighting. The Times supplement, War Poems, August, 1914–15, for example, included contributions from established civilian poets such as Robert Bridges, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Binyon, and Thomas Hardy
-First World War trench poetry was a unique phenomenon whereby testimony and poetry were yoked together, both registering new forms of violence, and the war-torn male body was the central subject; set against the abstract language of heroism, and became the ground of protest.
-twentieth century produced poets who sometimes chose to concentrate their writing on the horrifying effects of war on civilians
“The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still”
by Siegfried Sassoon
by Siegfried Sassoon
The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
And I remember things I'd best forget.
For now we've marched to a green, trenchless land
Twelve miles from battering guns: along the grass
Brown lines of tents are hives for snoring men;
Wide, radiant water sways the floating sky
Below dark, shivering trees. And living-clean
Comes back with thoughts of home and hours of sleep.
To-night I smell the battle; miles away
Gun-thunder leaps and thuds along the ridge;
The spouting shells dig pits in fields of death,
And wounded men, are moaning in the woods.
If any friend be there whom I have loved,
God speed him safe to England with a gash.
It's sundown in the camp; some youngster laughs,
Lifting his mug and drinking health to all
Who come unscathed from that unpitying waste:
(Terror and ruin lurk behind his gaze.)
Another sits with tranquil, musing face,
Puffing bis pipe and dreaming of the girl
Whose last scrawled letter lies upon his knee.
The sunlight falls, low-ruddy from the west,
Upon their heads. Last week they might have died
And now they stretch their limbs in tired content.
One says 'The bloody Bosche has got the knock;
'And soon they'll crumple up and chuck their games.
'We've got the beggars on the run at last!'
Then I remembered someone that I'd seen
Dead in a squalid, miserable ditch,
Heedless of toiling feet that trod him down.
He was a Prussian with a decent face,
Young, fresh, and pleasant, so 1 dare to say.
No doubt he loathed the war and longed for peace,
And cursed our souls because we'd killed bis friends.
One night he yawned along a haIf-dug trench
Midnight; and then the British guns began
With heavy shrapnel bursting low, and 'hows'
Whistling to cut the wire with blinding din.
He didn't move; the digging still went on;
Men stooped and shovelled; someone gave a grunt,
And moaned and died with agony in the sludge.
Then the long hiss of shells lifted and stopped.
He stared into the gloom; a rocket curved,
And rifles rattled angrily on the left
Down by the wood, and there was noise of bombs.
Then the damned English loomed in scrambling haste
Out of the dark and struggled through the wire,
And there were shouts and eurses; someone screamed
And men began to blunder down the trench
Without their rifles. It was time to go:
He grabbed his coat; stood up, gulping some bread;
Then clutched his head and fell.
I found him there
In the gray morning when the place was held.
His face was in the mud; one arm flung out
As when he crumpled up; his sturdy legs
Were bent beneath bis trunk; heels to the skye.
references:
http://www.warpoets.org/articles/what/
http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/themes/95/95402.html
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5890
http://www.warpoets.org/articles/what/
http://www.oxforddnb.com/public/themes/95/95402.html
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5890
