Recommended to me by a f/Friend, I'm very grateful. This is the horror of war laid bare in the only way poetry can.

Never was a more rich and sombre account given of war. Very incitefull and thoroughly worth reading!

Assigned: I love Wilfred Owen so much, I did my coursework on Mental Cases, and it's disturbingly brilliant as are many of his works

"Mental Cases" is one of the most haunting poems I've come across to date. I would heartily recommend this to any poetry fan, but most especially to those who appreciate this collection's inherent historicity.

Wilfred Owen died at age 25, one week before the end of the First World War. What is left for us is his small collection of poetry, written in the trenches and collected and edited by friends after his death. Its beautiful poetry, and what touches me most about it is that not all of it is sadness, even as the writer lived through unimaginable horror.

n  
The Kind Ghosts

She sleeps on soft, last breaths; but no ghost looms
Out of the stillness of her palace wall,
Her wall of boys on boys and dooms on dooms.

She dreams of golden gardens and sweet glooms,
Not marvelling why her roses never fall
Nor what red mouths were torn to make their blooms.

The shades keep down which well might roam her hall.
Quiet their blood lies in her crimson rooms
And she is not afraid of their footfall.

They move not from her tapestries, their pall,
Nor pace her terraces, their hecatombs,
Lest aught she be disturbed, or grieved at all.


n

I feel like we have the tendency to distance ourselves from the people who have fought in wars. We just can’t relate in the same way that they do. This collection of poems is more than adequate enough to bring forth that collection. Owen’s recounts are so vivid and haunting. Just knowing a little bit about him can change the way you read these pages. He writes so beautifully, yet so hopelessly.

Absolutely fabulous

Incredible writing, painfully vivid on its depiction of War. The two poems I have linked below are the first I encountered, and have returned to many times since.
There are several biographies about Wilfred Owen that I will read eventually, but I wanted to start with his own words.

"Anthem For Doomed Youth" read by Sean Bean:
https://youtu.be/GRj4DR5JTdY?si=IWKev...

"Dulce et Decorum est" read by Christopher Eccleston
https://youtu.be/qB4cdRgIcB8?si=enLdr...

His poems are beautiful okay.

O poeta inglês Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) combateu na Grande Guerra, num regimento de infantaria, durante o primeiro semestre de 1917. O stress da guerra levou-o ao colapso e foi internado num hospital psiquiátrico. Em Setembro, do ano seguinte, regressou à linha da frente onde morreu em combate a 4 de Novembro de 1918, uma semana antes do armistício.

"Não é de heróis que este livro trata. A poesia inglesa ainda não é digna de falar deles.
Também não trata de feitos ou territórios, da glória ou da honra, nem de qualquer potestades, tronos, dominações ou poderes que não sejam a Guerra.
Acima de tudo, não é com a Poesia que estou preocupado.
A Guerra é o meu tema e a compaixão da Guerra. A Poesia está na compaixão."
— Wilfred Owen


"DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Velhos mendigos vergados por mochilas,
Maldita tosse no lamaçal, trôpego passo,
Fomos virando costas a clarões de assombro,
Rumo ao repouso distante sofremos o caminho.
Sonâmbula marcha de soldados. Tantos sem botas,
Calçados de sangue manquejavam. Cegos e coxos todos
Ébrios de fadiga, surdos aos sinistros gritos
De quem caía exausto e para trás ficava.

Gás! GÁS! Rápido, rapazes! Em êxtase sem jeito
Enfiam por um triz seus toscos capacetes;
Mas ainda havia alguém aos tropeços e gritos
A patinhar como quem anda por betume ou fogo...
Na luz densa e verde por vidro embaciado
Vi-o sufocar obscuro, em verde mar submerso.

Diante de meus olhos impotentes, quando sonho,
Náufrago sufocado mergulha em mim e desfalece.

Se viesses também tu em sonhos sufocantes
Atrás deste vagão onde o lançámos
E visses que no rosto o olhar esgazeava,
Face pendente como demónio compungido;
Se em cada solavanco tu ouvisses o sangue
A brotar dos pulmões em golfadas de espuma,
Obsceno cancro amargo que nem massa
Da língua de inocentes ulcerada sem remédio,
Com tanta paixão, amigo, não dirias
A crianças sedentas de suprema glória
A tal mentira antiga: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."


(Otto Dix, War)

Written beautifully, but not my cup of tea.

I think I probably did the wrong thing, reading it cover to cover. I definitely feel like it was meant as more of a dipping-in-and-out kind of book.

Nevertheless, here are some of my favourite quotes:

“Fair fame I cast away as bridegrooms do
Their wedding garments in their haste of joy” from: To Eros pg 4

“I shall be better off with plants that share
More peaceably the meadow and the shower.” from: À Terre pg 50

“Quick treble bells begin at nine o’clock,
Scuttling the schoolboy pulling up his sock,
Scaring the late girl in the inky frock.” From: The Calls pg 58

“Now rather thank I God there is no risk
Of gravers scoring it with florid screed.
Let my inscription be this soldier’s disk…
Wear it, sweet friend, inscribe no date nor deed.
But may thy heart-beat kiss it, night and day,
Until the name grow blurred and fade away.” From: To My Friend (With an Identity Disc)

“For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like an injected drug for their bodies’ pains” from: Spring Offensive pg 71

“Yesterday’s Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul” from: Smile, Smile, Smile pg 75

“Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:” from Strange Meeting pg 78

Meaningful poems everyone, everywhere, should read.
(This is not the exact copy I own but has all of the exact same poems as my small, navy and red, hard cover copy.)
I was only familiar with two of Owen's poems from highschool, but even from them I was taken with his somber and vivid descripitions of the devastation and horrors faced in the frist world war.
Reading the entire collection from start to finish, though he had barely got started in his artistic career, is a journey. Namely Owen's own journey through the Flanders Trenches. The first few poems are riddled with longing and homesickness for his idealic life in Britain but as Owen stays longer in the trenches and wittnesses more wanton death and desturction the poems reflect those harsh and untenable realities he and many other young men are now faced with.
Whether you are interested in WWI or not; these poems are not to be missed. Simply because they are so haunting, beautiful in a way yes, but so devastating in the truth of pain and suffering which Owen himself rightly questions the vaildness of.
What makes these poems of death and suffering so much more powerful and meaningful; is the fact the Owen didnt survive this war. He died in those very trenches, trapped under the mud as the boys he wrote about.