The Poems of Wilfred Owen

The poems in this book goes so deep and it expresses how this brave patriot felt at that time and he saw the world and he he described the people who didn't listen to the propaganda's or go to the war!

Our English class had to do our assessment based on the poems of Wilfred Owen and especially the poem called 'Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est' which by the way is gruesome but at the same time so damn deep. and when i listened to the audio version of the poem, you could really hear the people suffering by the way he said it. he is truly inspirational and will always be remembered.

Especially liked "The Chances" and "Strange Meeting"

WW1 poet. Killed in action a week before the end, at 25.
Q:
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
...
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
...
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
...
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears.
(c)
Q:
I, too, saw God through mud, –
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.
...
I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate. (c)
Q:
With news of all the nations in your hand,
And all their sorrows in your face. (c)
Q:
Sit on the bed. I’m blind, and three parts shell.
Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me, – brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
I tried to peg out soldierly, – no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my medals? – Discs to make eyes close.
My glorious ribbons? – Ripped from my own back
In scarlet shreds. (That’s for your poetry book.)
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We used to say we’d hate to live dead-old, –
Yet now … I’d willingly be puffy, bald,
And patriotic. (c)

my personal favourites from this collection:
> the show
> mental cases
> à terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers)

Today is the 100th anniversary of Wilfred Owen’s death, yet his poems remain just as heartbreaking and important as they were all those years ago. Rest in peace, Wilfred ❤️

I came across Wilfred Owen while researching my novel set in WW1. his poetry is beautiful, haunting, and timeless, but somehow very approachable. The pain and anguish he brings to his most powerful pieces shook me and the beauty of his words made me feel like I was talking to an old friend trying to deal with terrible tragedy. Like Sigfriend Sassoon, his "on-the-ground" poetry does more for describing the soldier's experience than any reported account could dare.

Reposted November 4th, 2018 - in memory of November 4th, 1918, the poet's last battle!

I have been circling around World War I for a while now, reading novels that were published around 1915, such as The Voyage Out or Of Human Bondage, and poetry that referred back to that breaking point in history, for example Duffy's Last Post.

As "Dulce Et Decorum Est" is one of my all time favourite poems (if you can say that about something as sad and scary as those lines), I have been meaning to dig deeper into Owen's reflections for a long time.

I find it hard to describe my feelings towards this collection, as there are so many strands that join together to weave the pattern of this reading experience. There is the brilliant young poet, writing beautiful verse, and the witness of the literal break down of a whole value system, and the truthful chronicler of historical events, and the sad prophet, and the voice of millions of soldiers fighting a war that did not really regard them.

There is modernity in art breaking through the lines of the trenches, beauty for beauty's sake dying with the idealism that could not be kept in the face of bitter reality...

I keep thinking of Rudyard Kipling's world, an intact ethical system with the honour of the British Empire as a guiding star, and how this world was brutally destroyed when he pressured the system to let his myopic son Jack enrol in the war, only to lose him forever shortly afterwards. I wonder if it was worse for Kipling not to know exactly what happened, so that he had to keep asking, full of sorrow, after 1915, about news of his boy Jack:

“Have you news of my boy Jack? ”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide."

Would it have been easier for the devastated father if he had received all the harsh details Owen describes in his poems? The hard, sad, tormenting details of trench warfare and its effects, speaking of the countless young men lost...

The ones who die, thinking:

"I'd love to be a sweep now, black as Town,
Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?"

The ones who are mutilated forever, at age nineteen:

"He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow..."

The ones who have lost their sanity in the face of terror:

"But poor Jim, 'e's livin' an' e's not;
E' reckoned 'e'd five chances, an' 'e 'ad;
E's wounded, killed an' pris'ner, all the lot,
The bloody lot all rolled in one. Jim's mad."

The ones who survived to be haunted forever by their memories.

That of course was something Wilfred Owen could not write about, himself falling during the last week of the war in November 1918. But we have plenty of testimony of the traumatised survivors, as Doris Lessing recalls in her autobiography for example, describing her parents' fate. Remarque wrote down his nightmare in his All Quiet on the Western Front, describing an experience where the death, mutilation and trauma of young men was so common that newspapers could report "Nothing New On The Western Front" on the day the hero of the novel dies.

I could read, and reread Wilfred Owen over and over. First of all, he gives the war a voice that is honest and direct, without any of those "old lies" of decorous and honorable patriotic fights and deaths. He shows the reality of that time, but he also creates art. Where others write reports, he sings a desperate song of pity for a generation taught to die for a nation that does not care for them at all. When they discover that, it is too late.

He tells the story of those soldiers, and thus makes history come alive again, to remind and warn that there is no glory in killing.

But somehow, he also manages to give me hope. For he wrote beautiful, thoughtful, and wise poetry under horrendous pressure, thus showing the human ability to create a space for kindness and pity in any situation. Who writes like Owen has not given up on humanity as a whole. Who wants to reach out and teach the coming generations to be careful with their lives can not be entirely lost.

"I am the enemy you killed, my friend", - that line goes deep under my skin!

So I close his poetry collection deeply thankful that his poetry was saved for me to read, forever curious what he would have done with his incredible talent, had he lived beyond 25!

I dare you to read this and *not* turn into a pacifist. Owen’s vivid images and scenes of war will haunt you forever. He’s by far my favorite poet of all time!

I especially recommend this collection for lovers of Erich Maria Remarque’s “Im Westen nichts Neues”.