 | Anthem for Doomed Youth by Jon Stallworthy
Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War
The First World War began with flag-waving, parades and poets inspired by abstract ideals and the heroism of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - 'It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country'. In part this reflected the national mood and traditional glorification of war, but it revealed an almost universal failure to understand what modern mass warfare would really mean. The story of the war poets is also the story of an awakening to the full horror of what the twentieth century came to know as 'The Great War'.
Wilfred Owen said, 'My subject is War - and the pity of War'. He also said 'true Poets must be truthful'. The best war poetry was the work of writers who were also serving soldiers and was born out of their desire to tell the truth about what it was to be a soldier in the trenches - what it felt like, what it did to you and what it did to your fellow soldiers, friend or foe. The greatness of the poetry lay not just in the writer's talent, but in the unflinching accuracy with which it portrayed their terrible circumstances.
In Anthem for Doomed Youth, Jon Stallworthy, a leading poet and former professor of English Literature, tells the story of the lives and work of twelve soldier poets of the First World War and provides selections of the best of their works. The poets included are:
Rupert Brooke Julian Grenfell
Charles Sorley Francis Ledwidge
Siegfried Sassoon Robert Graves
Wilfred Owen Edmund Blunden
Edward Thomas Ivor Gurney
Isaac Rosenberg David Jones
Anthem for Doomed Youth was commissioned in association with the Imperial War Museum, as a companion publication to their exhibition of the same name.
Price: €25.00 |
