Read for AS Level English Literature 3.5/5

I don't know whether I can fully count this as read, as we only studied about 1/2 the poems in this book, but I've read some others, and will probably go on to read the rest soon.
I'm not the biggest poetry lover. I feel like I have to connect to the poet and just get what they are saying [Ariel by Sylvia Plath lacked this connection, hence why I hated it so much]. But overall I really enjoyed this.

Owen's subject was the Pity of War, and I think his poetry serves to do this theme justice perfectly. Some are horrific, like Dulce Et Decorum Est, and others are just haunting, like Shadwell Stair or Strange Meeting, but I feel like I took something away from each of these, and for that I'm grateful. Reading this collection reminded me of when I went to Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium and Northern France a couple of years ago, and the experience of seeing the places in which these battles were fought. Having that experience only made me appreciate these poems more, and want to revisit.

Favourites - Futility, Anthem For Doomed Youth, The Last Laugh, Strange Meeting, Soldier's Dream, Storm.

It breaks my heart everytime I read these poems. And the fact that Owen experienced the horror of war himself makes his writing even more chilling. I can't choose a favorite because essentially, all of them tell different stories that can be linked to the different times in Owen's life, whether it was during his naivety of war or during his actual experience of war. Each poem is special in their own way thus they hold a special place in my heart but I will say, Disabled made me tear up a bit and Dulce et Decorum Est was an eye opener. I just love them all.

Owen has more strikingly memorable poems than Sassoon, and less bitterness (though Sass' influence is tangible in Apologia and Dulce, for example, and Owen's bitterness is knife-sharp). A consistent grief and longing permeates many of his poems. His juvenalia are charming and precocious! Knowles' introduction is a well-informed and compassionate set-up for Owen's work.

This particular edition provides an excellent range of footnotes to put many of the particular poems of Owen's into context.

On New Year's Eve 1917, Owen wrote: "I go out of this year a Poet, my dear Mother, as which I did not enter it. I am held peer by the Georgians; I am a poet's poet."

Nearly a century later, time has proven him write and he still speaks to many of us. Most of us are familiar with his poem "Dulce et Decorum est." In some ways, I do feel a pity that we don't look to his work very often except for his unflinching observations of war that serve as ample evidence for the condemnation of conflict. He has poems such as "The Little Mermaid," a 624-line epic that is quite readable, and shows some great influence by Keats, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Spenser and Shelley, especially "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Had he survived, might we regard him a significant speculative poet?

This collection allows us to ponder where he was going with fragments such as "An Imperial Elegy" or "The Wrestlers," regarding Hercules and other figures of Greek myth.

Owen penned poems such a "The Rime Of The Youthful Mariner," "O World of Many Worlds" and "Who Is The God of Canongate?" and while one has to account for the poetic tastes of the time and the importance of rhyme, there's much that remains readable and worth reading.

Such time has passed that one day I hope he'll be regarded as the multidimensional poet he was. He was a solider, he was a poet, he was a voice lost ahead of his time who still speaks to ours.

I picked this up, and began reading it, in July 2021. Finally, in January 2022, I've finished reading it.
I'll be honest, I think I would have enjoyed and appreciated these poems more if, rather than reading them just out of choice, I'd be reading them for the purpose of literary or historical analysis. I did find it hard to absorb a lot of them.
However, I did kinda click with Dulce et Decorum est, The Kind Ghosts, Exposure, Inspection and Le Christianisme.

Owen was a rustic soul heavily influenced by Keats. When he was faced with the unspeakable terrors of the trenches he wrote probably the greatest war poetry written in the English language It is readable, highly literate, graphic and appalling how he captures what those lads went through. Dulce et decorum est..

One can detect the makings a great poet in these few verses of Wilfred Owen. Such a shame to be cut off in his prime.

Have had curiosity in Wilfried Owen works and his legacy keeps a valuable source of inspiration for war poetry.
Tremendous the influence of Seigfried Sasoon noticed

Poems of Wilfred Owen
By Wilfred Owen. Edited by Jon Stallworthy

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

The Poems of Wilfred Owen collection was published in 1985, my copy clocks in at 197 pages. I have never been a lover of poetry and have often spoken against it especially when studying or writing poetry at university and college. I do, however, have some favourites and Wilfred Owen the famous World War One poet is one of them. I don’t pretend to know much about poetry but I do know that when I read Owen’s war poetry a part of me wants to cry as I hear my voice crack. Wilfred Owen died only seven days before the end of the war on 11th November 1918. This edition was fantastic and I’d recommend grabbing it off eBay if you can. Each poem has footnotes and labels of when and where he wrote the particular poem. The quote before this review is from my personal favourite: Duce et decorum est, it absolutely kills me when I read it, that’s how I know its good. Please, if you want to read some war poetry, give Owen a chance, he is absolutely superb. There’s a little something for everybody here from Sonnets to Odes, though I must admit his pre-war poetry isn’t much good but as the time progresses and he’s writing from the trenches the poetry gets dark, gritty and very real.

This was the first time I ever read a book of poetry (my previous experience with poetry was limited to set poems at school), and I'm pleased to say I was pleasantly surprised. Owen's poetry is musical and deeply moving, and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry or history. The subject matter is sombre - I needed a break midway through this book.

A sobering collection from one of the leading poets of World War I (and friend to fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, whom he met in a hospital while recovering from shell shock) that is historically significant in that it doesn't shy away from the bloody realism of trench warfare and the harsh truth of war, unlike much of the literature of the time.

It is tragic loss that he died at such early age & what wonderful poet he is.