Well may we pray
that listening he
had decided to stay.

Lingering around Sassoon
despite these words:

"You said it would be a good thing for my poetry if I went back."

To Hell. ( )

Never spent much time with the War Poets, but everybody knows that old lie "Dulce Et Decorum Est," right?

Making a note that I skipped the intro and appendices so I can go back at a later date (it was taking me too long to read it already). ( )

Pretty much everyone who completed high school has read "Dulce et Decorum set," Owens' most well-knopwn contribution to 20th-century poetry, but why don't we ever cover anything else that he wrote? Sure, his early work (collected here as "Juvenalia") is a touch predictable in its mimicry of previous poets, but when read in context with the entirety of his work we can see a real progression of literary talent. I kind of wish that the editor had attempted to reconstruct a chronological presentation, since the grouping in "war poems," "juvenilia," and others is rendered useless by the inclusion of poems whose subject is clearly war in every section! I'm sure the point was to make a delineation between poems written on the Front and those written pre-war or during his convalescence, but I would have been much more satisfied to see things organized neatly by publication/writing time so we could see more of the poet's development. Clearly Owens didn't live long enough to develop much scope, but seeing his mentality towards war evolve would be extremely useful in the context of the early 20th-century mindset. ( )

Not poetry for poetry, but poetry expressing sorrow and futility of war.

"Earth's wheels run oiled with blood."

"Happy are those who lose imagination: They have enough to carry with ammunition."

Owen died on November 4, 1918 exactly one week before the armistice, almost to the hour. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death as the church bells were ringing, celebrating the end of the war. ( )