"
The Soldier’s Death
By Anne, Countess of Winchilsea (1660–1720)

TRAIL all your pikes, dispirit every drum,
March in a slow procession from afar,
Ye silent, ye dejected men of war!
Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb!
Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner;
For see! where on the bier before ye lies
The pale, the fall’n, the untimely sacrifice
To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour. "

My experience with poetry anthologies is limited as an adult reader. Given my pleasant experience with this volume, that is likely to change. Over the last few years while browsing poetry sections I have discovered that this anthology is near ubiquitous. I feel grateful I finally approached it. I would be curious about corresponding verse from Turkey and the Balkans.

I discovered a few new poets I’ll approach again and my estimations of Sassoon, Owen and Blunden were undoubtedly confirmed. ( )

BTW the Introduction by Jon Silkin is excellent. It’s not just a couple of pages, it’s almost a third of the book (77 pages in a book of 282 pages, though that includes the indexes and the bibliography.) He talks about the issue of evaluating the war poets for their explicit ideas, even if we disagree (as to militarism, patriotism, pacifism and so on) and his schema consists of two parts:

•… an arrangement, or progression, of poets according to a developing consciousness, in relation to the war and the ‘good’ of society as a whole
•…an attempt to group poets in terms of sensibility and language.

He places the war poets in context with the preceding Romantic poets, and he identifies four stages of consciousness:

•… a passive reflection of, or conduit for, the prevailing patriot ideas, and the cant that’s contingent on most social abstract impulsions.
•…’the role of the angry prophet’, protesting against the war through the recreation of physical horror, through anger and satire, and through sardonic distancing.
•…’compassion’ – with strength of feeling
•…’an active desire for change, a change that will re-align the elements of human society in such a way as to make it more creative and fruitful.

This is a very good collection, thoughtfully arranged and inclusive of both sides of the conflict.

To see the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/04/25/the-penguin-book-of-first-world-war-poetry-e... ( )

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (Second edition) edited by Jon Silkin and David McDuff is a collection of poetry from and about the WWI. Silkin and McDuff increased the number of poems in translation included in the collection. There are poems translated from German, French, Italian, Russian, and Hebrew, and Silkin was a poet himself. As expressed in the not at the beginning, “For some, war was moral athletics; others looked forward to the experience of war as a ‘vacation from life’ — a vacation from a society disjoined by class and constrained by the rigid structures of labour.” (page 12)

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2012/11/the-penguin-book-of-first-world-war-poetry-s... ( )

Early works – for young kids ( )