I don't know why, but I am very drawn to his words. "Dulce et Decorum est" in particular.

Honestly it felt too tragic to pick favourites amongst the poems they felt far too harrowing with his vivid descriptions of war. These are absolute must read war poems through this insight, Owen writes so eloquently about his experiences it’s utterly heartbreaking.

“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, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.” —Wilfred Owen, “Preface”

Of all the World War I poets, Owen seems to have captured the horrors and “insensibility” of war most astutely, refusing to look away from the quizzical faces of corpses contorted by the question “Why?” This collection of well-crafted, gut-wrenching poems contains dozens of thoughtful answers.

“But cursed are the dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever moans in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears.”
—“Insensibility”

Favorite Poems:
“To Poesy”
“[Unto what pinnacles]”
“[O World of many worlds]”
“”Anthem for Doomed Youth”
“The Peril of Love”
“1914”
“[Stunned by their life’s explosion]”
“Dulce et Decorum Est”
“Insensibility”
“Strange Meeting”
“The Show”
“S.I.W.”
“The Next War”
“The Last Laugh”
“Mental Cases”
“The Parable of the Old Man and the Young”
“Disabled”
“A Terre”
“Exposure”
“The Sentry”
“Spring Offensive”
“Preface”

I loved the Wordsworth Edition of this book, it has an amazing introduction (and notes) by Owen Knowles. The poems are ordered chronologically so you can see the changes in Wilfred Owen's writings, especially after his enlistment. The fact that he wanted his poems to include and be also understandable by his fellow soldiers make his writing easy to read and emotive. I loved this book, but going through it is a very taxing experience, every stanza is full of sadness and reality. Yes, 'Dulce et Decorum Est' is one of Owen's most known poems, but there are many other with such powerful situations, like the aftermath of war (as expressed on 'Disabled') and shell-shock.

I've started reading WW1 poetry every year at this time, last year it was Rupert Brooke n  n this year I have sampled one of the most famous anti-war poets of them all, Wilfred Owen. n  n

Read his Wikipedia page - his experiences were horrifying and he was killed in action a week before the Armistice. I'm going to be presumptuous and assume that this talented, sensitive young man would literally have been a shellshocked wreck if he survived. How could he not be?

From his most famous poem Dulce et Decorum Est

n  Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind...n

How could the mind that envisaged the above survive unscathed.

Our local monument is now lit at night and I went to the first night on the 24th (the eve of ANZAC Day) Interesting that was was originally planned was diluted because of public apathy and the expense - and that it has taken close on 100 years to be lit at night.

n  

n    n      n    n  

n

Lest we forget.

3.5 Stars!

“This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak them…My subject is War, and the pity of War.”

This collection contains his most known and cherished poems, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Dulce et Decorum est” and “Strange Meeting”, but the one which struck the most plangent chord for me was “Disabled” which left me with a real chill as I pictured the images of those who returned physically as well as mentally broken and how their real, life-long battles were only beginning.

This is a haunting and powerful collection, which is all the more memorable when we consider that Owen was killed around 7 days before the war’s end. This slim volume rightly deserves its place in the essential canon of war literature along with the likes of Sassoon, Harrison, Graves, Remarque and Junger et al.

This collection of 23 poems by Wilfred Owen is the most powerful anti-war piece of literature I have read. It moved me even more than Robert Graves and Gabriel Garcia Remarque who were both writing contemporary to Owen.
Owen who was drafted to fight in France was writing from the heart, writing graphically and honestly about the everyday horrors, as well as the realities of living life as a vet, an injured service member and a PTSD survivor.
He died 3 weeks before the armistice in 1918 and these poems were published posthumously. Many of the pieces were vignettes capturing hyper-specific scenes from the battleground, like a soldier in his dying breath or a squad marching from a hill or a patient waking up in the ward; this style of narration is especially haunting because it shows that there was no end to the nightmarish scenarios.
Owen was workshopping his poems literally in the trenches with his best friend and probably lover Seigfried Sassoon.
Dulce et Decorum est is the most well-known poem in this collection but I felt like most of the poems were devastatingly good. Here are some favourites:

Strange meeting
One of the most haunting and complex in the collection. Narrated by a soldier who finds himself suddenly out of the battlefield (in hell it turns out) and there he meets the enemy soldier he killed the day before.
“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”


Apologi pro Poemate Meo
The title means "in defence of my poetry". It shows how the soldiers became desensitised to death.
"I, too, saw God through mud—
t The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
t War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,"


Spring Offensive
The poem describes the German Spring Offensive of 1918, a bloody series of battles near the close of World War I.
It focuses on the experience of a particular army squad in a particular location.
The speaker recounts the mood and behaviour of average soldiers as they rest up, prepare for combat, and charge over a ridge that seems to separate life and death.


Mental Cases
One of Wilfred Owen's more graphic poems. It describes PTSD torn men. Owen based the poem on his experience of Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Scotland where he spent some time in a hospital ward and wrote some of these pieces.
In this poem, those who survived the war are now reliving it in shell shock. Scenes from the battlefield insert themselves into everyday life.

"These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders


Anthem of the Doomed Youth
Written in the psych ward, about the ‘dying rites’ of soldiers on the war front.
"What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Dulce et decorum Est
Title of the poem is from a Roman speech often quoted by war mongers of the time to rouse young people to volunteer for the war. It means how sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country.
The text presents a vignette from the front lines of World War I; specifically, of British soldiers attacked with chlorine gas.
In the rush when the shells with poison gas explode, one soldier is unable to get his mask on in time. The speaker of the poem describes the gruesome effects of the gas on the man.
"In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."

The deadbeat soldier.
It’s about a soldier who suddenly and mysteriously becomes too psychologically damaged to fight and plops down on the ground ’unwounded’. It’s one of Owen’s darkest poems, as it shows the ruthlessness of war on is spread all levels, as even his comrades can’t feel sorry for the deadbeat. They’ve become fully desensitised to the man’s suffering. (He dies at the hospital bed)

SIW
In reference to soldiers who died by 'self-inflicted wounds'. Suicides i the trenches plagued both sides of the war. Soldiers who committed suicide due to horrific conditions, or to a fractured mental state, were considered to be the worst of the lowly worst and were usually buried without the honours afforded to soldiers who’d been killed in the line of duty.

Futility
A departure from his usual graphic style. Futility details an event where a group of soldiers attempts to revive an unconscious soldier by moving him into the warm sunlight on a snowy meadow. However, the "kind old sun" cannot help the soldier - he has died.
The poem uncharacteristically for Owens has some escapism in it.
“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.”

A Terre
Wilfred Owen wrote ‘A Terre’ about the aftermath of the war. In it, a soldier reminisces about his days before the war – the days when he had full functionality of his limbs, and could do whatever he wanted.
‘Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell. 
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.’

Conscious
This is a poem written from the point of view of an injured soldier emerging from unconsciousness into confused half-awareness. It is writing from the patient's POV, in a bewildered stream of consciousness.

Disabled
The poem focuses on an injured soldier in the aftermath of the war. Still quite young, the man feels old and depends on others for everything, having lost his legs and parts of his arms in battle. Reflecting on his decision to go to war (to impress a girl named Meg, after having had a peg), the poem shows the horror of the conflict and suggests that many young men didn't really know what they were getting themselves into when they first enlisted.
“It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. He wonders why.
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.
That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
How cold and late it is [in the care facility]! Why don't they come"?

Reading this so shortly after finishing War & Peace, I wonder what Tolstoy would have made of Owen's work; I imagine he would have been sad, sad that such a slim body of work communicated so much, because of the context in which it was written, because of the power of each poem, and because of the cumulative effect of such brutal inspiration.

Should be mandatory reading for every high schooler coerced into joining the military when recruitment officers show up on campus.

It had moments of brilliance...

I checked this out solely to read his poem of The Little Mermaid. The poem did not flow well to me, however there were wonderfully descriptive parts regarding the palace and the bivalves opening and shutting on top of it, the decorative (yet restrictive) clams the merfolk place upon their tails for status, the disgusting description of the sea witches territory with oozing mud and far white slugs, the vile concoction the sea witch makes for the little mermaid to drink (which includes the sea witches blood), how the little mermaid enjoyed racing along with the big waves and storm without realizing it was really distressful to the humans and how slimy the princes hair was after being tossed about on the waves all night. I also like the detail included, that her father and grandmother and sisters would from a distance observe her from the sea whilst on land. And I like thinking of her helping make the roses bloom after she transferred to being a spirit of the air

Know as a soldier and one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry is hard hitting, real and thought provoking. His poetry is not just about war, but the human condition. Highlights ~ "O World of many worlds" "1914" "Happiness" "The Promisers" "Anthem for Doomed Youth" "Disabled" "Dulce et Decorum Est" "Asleep" "Exposure" "S.I.W." "A Terre" "Futility" "Strange Meeting" and "Spring Offensive".

There is much religious imagery in Owen's poems, which dulls their intent to this atheist. Calls to authority and invocations of mythology dilute instead of intensify.

His pre-war work is intensely romantic and flowery. Then you remember he was only 25 when killed. Twenty five.

The marked change in style after meeting Sassoon is remarkable, and one can only wonder, sadly, at what he would have produced had he lived. He was a poet's poet.

His war poems are something completely different. They don't show the raw anger of Sassoon's, instead they convey Owen's inner world and empathy for people (including the enemy, at times).

Dulce et Decorum est is rightly lauded. It brings together the horror, both physical and political, of the First World War. Perfect terror.