I'd never heard of Wilfred Owen before his name came up as one of the quintessential examples of anti-war work. As part of my effort to read more poetry, I thought I'd take a look. My library had this edition available as an ebook. To read it on my phone, I had to turn the phone sideways because otherwise the formatting was impossible, but it worked fine holding the phone horizontally.

I feel inadequate to review these poems. They are powerful and gripping. I'm not well enough educated in poetry to understand how they relate to other poetry or whether they are subtly doing something cool with the form or the meter. But what I can say is that I felt the emotion and raw energy radiating from every word.

If I had six stars this book would have them. War poetry is always difficult to read but Wilfred Owen is the master who leads you through the horrors and anger with line after line of breathtaking poetry. His poetry is crafted. If he hadn't died just before WWI who knows what he would have achieved. I was left with a great sense of loss because the world missed out on this man's potential for greatness. Even if you never read poetry read this.

Unfortunately, war is an unmitigated part of the human experience. Wilfred Owen, a British soldier in the first world war, became the greatest poet ever to write about war. In places, Owen gives us the guns of war--brutal, percussive descriptions of death as in "Anthem"; in other places, Owen laments delicately as in "Futility" (pg. 135).

Owen shows us a world "wound with war's hard wire" that is "but the trembling of a flare," but Owen also perceives beauty "in hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight" and even finds peace "where shell storms spouted reddest spate."

Owen did not believe that we could fully understand war except we share in the "sorrowful dark of hell" as he experienced it. For us civilians who, thanks to brave soldiers, have not experienced war first-hand, Wilfred Owen brings us as near as we may possibly get.

Owen's poetry articulates the duality of "war's hard wire"--the barbs of painful experience and the strong wire that binds our hearts in fellowship and in the "silentness of duty."

I'll wrap up my review by listing Owen's Poem "Futility" where Owen laments the death of his friend and fellow soldier.

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, - still warm, - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

‘Blood’s dirt,’ he laughed, looking away,
Far off to where his wound had bled
And almost merged for ever into clay.
‘The world is washing out its stains,’ he said.

Owen is defined by 'Dulce et Decorum Est', which is in my opinion the greatest war poem ever written. Alongside Sassoon, Graves and Brooke his poetry has defined WW1 for several generations now, and his work is studied and admired in classrooms and lecture theatres today. So, does this Penguin edition of the collected poems of Owen, as edited by Siegried Sassoon in 1920 meet expectations? Yes and no. One can't deny that several of his poems are significant both as works of literature and as representations of his time in the trenches of the western front. However, there are also some surprises that might change one's perception of the poet if all one knows is the aforementioned 'Dulce...'.

The first thing that the reader will note when looking at this volume is how classical Owen's poetry is. There are all the hallmarks of ancient poets such as Catullus as well as romantic writers such as Keats in these poems. The focus on youth and on beauty is part of this connection, and one can also detect a homoerotic tension with the early poems of this collection. It might be argued that Owen is not explicitly writing with a queer consciousness, however in poems such as 'To Eros' and 'Storm' Owens adapt the language of Greek and Roman lyric poets to develop erotic representations of those he loves and the boys he knows. This can also be seen in his poem 'Happiness':

n  "But the old Happiness is unreturning
Boy's griefs are not so grievous as youth's yearning
Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope
We who have seen the gods' kaleidoscope
And played with huma passions for our toys
We know men suffer chiefly by their joysn

As the reader progresses into the second and final thirds of this volume the poetry of the war overwhelms the more academic and erotic works, and as expected we come face to face with Owens' graphic, painful and sensual representation of his war. One of the reasons why Owens' war poetry is so effective is because he is driven by battle's sensuality and the strength of his figurative language. For example, in his 'Fragment: Cramped in that Funnelled Hole' Owen writes:

n  "But the old Happiness is unreturning
They were in one of many mouths of Hell
Not seen of seers in visions, only felt
As teeth of traps, where bones and the dead are smelt
Under the mud where long ago they fell
Mixed with the sour sharp odour of the shelln

One cannot but be impressed by how visceral, how vivid Owens' language is, how it sounds when spoken out loud, how it offers a vision of war that repels and fascinates.

This book might not be the best edition of Owens' poetry, but it certainly contains some seminal work and other poems that deserve reading. 'Disabled', 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'The Sentry' are all stand out works, though to be fair they can't compete with 'Dulce...'. The fragments that have been included by Sassoon in this collection are minor classics in and of themselves, and show the reader something of Owens' writing processes (including how even his unfinished work is better than other poets' complete pems).

It would have been helpful if this edition had more critical and contextual information, however to be fair this is not an academic text but a reprint of Owens' original collected works. It goes without saying that if one wants more from the poet and more about his life and work then other books should be chased down. As for my enjoyment of this edition, it was an engaging read that had me ask myself questions about Owens' reputation, his sexuality and his education. It also reinforced my long held opinion that he was the best poet of World War One.

I was familiar with Owen's more popular work (we studied war poetry in high school) but I thought it was high-time I read him properly. I was not disappointed. His poetry is desperately, desperately sad, often-times horrific & disgusting, but it still speaks to us across the decades about the horrors of war and the needless loss of life associated with the First World War specifically. His love poetry too, peppered sporadically through his tales of war, is quietly devastating and gorgeous - and certainly homoerotic, if not overtly queer. I like how a lot of the poems are merely fragments, or were penned down so quickly and rapidly that some of the words are illegible, or exist in several different forms as Owen toyed over and over again with the same themes. Makes it all seem real, and it's proof that these verses were penned in the midst of the trenches and Owen's spells in hospital. It's a real shame that Owen died so close to the end of the war, not least because he never got to see how much impact his poetry had posthumously. He's one of the greats of his time and certainly one of the best 20th century poets I've read.

Stand-outs for me include Owen's masterpieces, 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth,' but also 'Shadwell Stair,' 'The Parable of the Old Men and the Young,' 'Greater Love,' 'The Dead-Beat,' 'S.I.W,' 'Disabled,' 'The Next War,' 'A Terre (Being the Philosophy of Many Soldiers),' 'Wild With All Regrets (Another Version of A Terre) to Siegfried Sassoon,' 'Miners,' 'To My Friend With an Identity Disc,' 'Smile, Smile, Smile,' & 'Strange Meeting.' That the collection should end with a poem that tells of Wilfred Owen and one of the enemy soldiers he killed meeting in the afterlife ('Strange Meeting') and coming together, peacefully, in death, is very apt.

3.5/5

I feel a bit harsh not giving this a higher rating. I read Dulce et Decorum est in school and can't recommend it enough. It is the most harrowing and lucid poem ever written about the trenches and warfare in World War I. There are many other brilliant poems in this collection which I have listed below. Having said that about half of the poems in here felt a little flat.

Favourite Poems
-The Unreturning
-Shadwell Stair
-The Sentry
-Dulce et Decorum est
-Asleep
-The Send-off
-Conscious
-The Fates
-Anthem for Doomed Youth
-All Sounds Have Been as Music
-The Kind Ghosts
-Exposure
-Strange Meeting
-At a Calvary near the Ancre

Incredible antiwar poems from a British WW1 officer.

The Preface says it all:
“This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War.

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are not to this generation, This is in no sense consolatory.

They may be to the next. All the poet can do to-day is to warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful. If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,—my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.”
- Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen’s *Poems* is a raw and brutally honest collection of verses that captures the true horror of war. Written by a soldier who fought in the trenches of World War I, Owen’s work pulls no punches in portraying the physical and emotional devastation soldiers endured. Having experienced the violence and trauma himself, Owen’s poems are deeply personal, and the vivid imagery he uses brings the nightmarish reality of warfare to life.

One of the main themes throughout the collection is the futility and senselessness of war. Owen constantly challenges the romanticized view of war that was popular at the time. Poems like *Dulce et Decorum Est* tear apart the notion that dying for one’s country is a noble and honorable act. In this poem, Owen describes the agonizing death of a soldier from a gas attack, his body contorted and blood gurgling from his mouth. The vivid, grotesque images leave no space for any idealized notion of heroism. The line “It is sweet and honorable to die for your country” is turned on its head, exposing the cruelty and absurdity of a system that sends young men to die in such a horrific manner.

Owen’s portrayal of the psychological toll of war is equally devastating. In *Mental Cases*, he describes soldiers who are physically alive but mentally broken, their minds scarred by the trauma of what they’ve seen and done. In *Insensibility*, he suggests that soldiers have to shut off their emotions in order to survive, which leads to a kind of numbness. The poem’s detached structure mirrors the emotional detachment soldiers must develop to endure the chaos of battle. But Owen never loses sight of their humanity, and in *The Dead-Beat*, he captures the tragic numbness of a soldier who seems to have lost all will to live. His poems are not just about physical wounds; they are about the deep emotional and psychological scars left by war, scars that are often invisible but just as debilitating.

The tone of Owen’s poetry is marked by bitterness, sorrow, and dark irony. He is never sentimental about the soldiers he writes about. In poems like *Anthem for Doomed Youth* and *The Send-Off*, Owen critiques the disconnect between the idealized vision of war and the brutal reality of death and suffering. In *Anthem for Doomed Youth*, he contrasts the idea of soldiers being honored in death with the grim reality that their only “send-off” is the noise of battle. The mournful tone in this poem is one of anger, as Owen decries the lack of respect for the soldiers who sacrifice their lives for a senseless cause.

However, even amid the darkness, Owen’s poetry is filled with moments of tragic beauty. In *Greater Love*, he contrasts the superficial love of women with the purity of the love soldiers share for one another, a love forged in the crucible of battle. The imagery of hearts “made great with shot” is a powerful metaphor for the selflessness and sacrifice of soldiers. Even as Owen mourns the loss of life and innocence, there is a deep respect for the humanity that emerges from such suffering.

The structure of Owen’s poems mirrors the disorientation and fragmentation caused by war. In many of his works, the lines are irregular, with enjambment creating a sense of chaos and instability. The form reflects the fractured lives of soldiers, whose sense of time and reality is often warped by the violence they witness. The broken, erratic rhythms in *Dulce et Decorum Est* and *Exposure* convey the exhaustion, panic, and disarray that soldiers feel as they march through the horrors of war. The repetition of the phrase “But nothing happens” in *Exposure* reflects the sense of futility, as soldiers wait for action that never seems to come.

What sets Owen’s *Poems* apart from other war poetry is the empathy he brings to his subjects. His poems are not just about the horrors of war—they are about the men who live and die in it. Owen never lets us forget that these soldiers are real people, not just symbols of national pride or sacrifice. In *Smile, Smile, Smile*, he sarcastically critiques the way society celebrates war, contrasting the wounded soldiers’ pain with the empty patriotism of those on the homefront. The poem’s bitter tone shows how little understanding or respect there is for the suffering of the men who fought.

The collection also addresses the internal struggles of soldiers, as seen in poems like *S. I. W.* and *The Chances*. In *S. I. W.*, Owen describes a soldier who, worn down by the constant torment of war, takes his own life. The poem powerfully conveys the emotional agony of soldiers who feel they have no escape from their suffering. Owen’s portrayal of the soldier’s final moments as both a release and a tragic failure speaks to the emotional devastation that soldiers experience—often pushed to the brink of madness by the horrors around them.

Owen’s use of language is often stark, direct, and visceral. In *Futility*, he meditates on the absurdity of death, as a soldier who once awoke “by the kind old sun” now lies cold and lifeless, untouched by the sun’s warmth. The simplicity of the language in this poem makes the loss feel all the more immediate and real. Owen doesn’t need to embellish or soften the truth of death—he confronts it head-on, forcing the reader to face the devastating impact of war without any illusions.

Ultimately, *Poems* by Wilfred Owen is a collection that forces readers to confront the dark, unrelenting reality of war. It is not a glorification of sacrifice or heroism, but a raw portrayal of the pain, loss, and futility that soldiers experience. Through his vivid imagery, fragmented structures, and darkly ironic tone, Owen creates a powerful anti-war message that challenges romanticized notions of battle and heroism. His poems remind us that the true cost of war is not in medals or monuments, but in the broken bodies and minds of those who survive—and in the lives lost that can never be brought back.

Rupert Brooke, author of the most famous British pro-war poem, ‘If I should die, think only this of me,’ died early in the war. Wilfred Owen, author of the most famous British anti-war poems, died a week before armistice. There is a sad poetic irony in the deaths of both men.

In some ways Owen was heading towards a conventional lyrical style in the manner of Yates before World War One. When he became a soldier, his experience on the trenches and his friendship with Siegfried Sassoon caused him to adopt a more realistic style.

Yet the lyrical style remains, and is often the best of Owen. Like many war poets he gives in to bitterness, which can be directed at the authorities, and at those who stay at home, not knowing what is really happening – the generals, old men, women, and so on.

More than Sassoon however, Owen aims for a deeper compassion and even an empathy for the dead. His best poem is Anthem for Doomed Youth. There is a tinge of rancour in the opening line, ‘What passing bells for those who die as cattle’ but the rest of the poem seems to almost seek to offer a series of metaphorical conceits that pay tribute to the dead.

Other poems deal with shell-shock, mental illnesses caused by the war, guilt, and of course death. Death is the subject of Owen’s second most-famous poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.

How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country, Horace’s poem opined, and this ode was used to justify the war. However if there was ever any glory in dying in war, it is over now. Owen describes it as an ‘old lie’ and contrasts it with the horrific death of a man who failed to get his mask on in time during a gas attack.

The other most striking poem here is Strange Meeting, where a soldier escapes the trenches into Hell and meets another soldier who tells him “I am the enemy you killed, my friend”. While many soldiers hated the Germans, the more sensitive and imaginative person such as Owen could conceive of the idea that a German soldier might be someone as decent as himself, and feel guilt that he had to kill him.

Owen himself is hard to place in these poems. We know he is a compassionate and angry soldier, and he utters his share of religious pieties. Some readers have speculated about Owen’s sexuality. He certainly says little about women, and one or two poems seem more adoring of men. Is ‘Shadwell Stair’ describing a meeting point for cruising homosexuals?

Who knows? Owen’s early death is a personal tragedy, but also a loss for poetry. This volume of his work is very slender. A few of the poems are not quite finished. Perhaps a few of the other poems might have been polished up a little if Owen had lived.

Still if some of the poems seem overly enigmatic or a little rough around the edges, the best of the works have astounding beauty and sadness. No war poet before or since has done more to capture the pity of war than Owen.

Eye opening, moving, insightful - enables you to get to grasps fully with what happened all those years ago. Satirically put against the time.

a great little book with the best works of Owen, including S.I.W.,Futility and Anthem for Doomed Youth , amazing that he wrote such deep poems at such a young age and in such short a time

his use of language is amazing and really brings home the futility of war