i have no idea why it took my so long to finish this, but i'm glad it did. owen's poetry has always inspired me and made me incredibly sad. i had only known his most famous works but diving into this felt like i was really getting to know wilfred owen. his early work made me smile with a little tear in my eye, you can clearly tell he was young and figuring out life and how to communicate that through his work. his war poems are desperately heartbreaking and real, the complexity of camaraderie with fellow soldiers mixed with the incomprehensible slaughter feels tangible. my favourites were dulce et decorum est (because of course), maundy thursday, disabled, i saw his round mouths crimson and the poet in pain.

Absolutely brilliant.

I wanted to finish this today because November 4th 1918 was the day Wilfred Owen as killed. He was 25. This is, accordingly, a slim book. The poems and fragments add up to 73 pages. Imagine what he might have done if he had lived. There is a quote, which typically I can't find, in Clive James's Cultural Amnesia when he is talking about a composer who died tragically young. And he says (and I'm trying to remember this off the top of my head) imagine what he could have produced if he'd live as long as Mozart. Let alone...whoever it is. Imagine what Owen could have achieved if he had lived. But he didn't.

This edition has an excellent introduction from Owen Knowles, which contextualises Owen's life and poetic development. And it is clear from reading these poems that there comes a point where he sloughs off one poetic skin: a pastoral, old-fashioned, Keatsian one and lies before us in a glistening new poetic skin: modern, less knowingly poetic, blunter and more realistic.

The tradition is to date this change to his meeting with Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart. There must be some truth in that but I wonder if, by this point, his experience of war had knocked some of the dreamy poet out of him. It is still there, but less obviously on show.

I am often quoting Anna Akhmatova's poem 'Requiem'. The famous question she is asked: "Can you describe this?" The poet as witness. The poet as advocate for the voiceless. And this is here in Owen's poetry. As Knowles quotes in this introduction:

"The connection between the soldierly leader and the poetic pleader is established in one of Owen's last letters: '"I came out here to help these boys - directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly by watching their suffering that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can.' (p10)

The earliest poems aren't bad but they sound like echoes of other people's poetry. The later poems are Wilfred Owen's own voice. Some of them are the most famous war poems in the English language: Futility; Dulce et Decorum Est; Strange Meeting and Anthem for a Doomed Youth. Others are less well-known but equally effecting and powerful: Disabled; A Terre; Mental Cases; Insensibility (which I think might be the best poem in the collection) and The Last Laugh. There's a short poem called 'Soldier's Dream', which I really like. And I'll end my review with it:

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with his tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs.
Not even an old flintlock, nor even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs." (p62)

4.5 stars

Wonderful. Extraordinary. Memorable.

"surely we have perished / sleeping, and walk hell"

I am not a poetry nut, I usually can't stomach the stuff. However, this is an exceptional read that can only be summarized as moving. When he describes teaching Christ to drill all day, it was a jaw dropping moment. I have not done the description justice but I invite you to read it for yourself.

Available from Park Lane and Thomas Danby campuses.

the poetry is in the pity

Wilfred Owen was the first poet to make me even interested in the genre, which I suppose some people would find to be as a bit of a surprise. For the longest time, the genre intimidated me, but then a friend started talking about how Owen twisted his words and the poignant sadness of his short life's tale, and I reasoned, "Why not?" So I nosed around the Poetry Foundation and found a few I rather liked. Later, I picked up this chapbook from Project Gutenberg. It was a wise decision.

Naturally, some of the poems within are rough, but given that none of these were necessarily meant for publication due to Owen's untimely death, they're all exquisite little creatures. It would be easy to quote "Anthem For Doomed Youth" or "Dulce et Decorum est" (which are good), but I'll go ahead and quote these two lines from the stanza of "Greater Love," which manage to rip me open entirely: "Your slender attitude / Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed..." I only have a few words for this: holy shit.

Extrem;ey moving to see a young man who was very patrotic and then seeing the realties of war- ver very moving

From "1914"

War broke: and now the winter of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centered at Berlin,
Is over all the width of Europe whirled...

I love war poetry, and Owen is one of the greatest war poets. The tragedy, the introspection, the reflection on humanity and what ails us all. Owen's poetry is true and evocative and rings of deep experience.