Poetry
Much of the copy submitted by soldiers of the Division was poetry. Some was good, some was doggerel and occasional pieces were excellent: but not all was welcome. The fourth issue contained this notice from the editor:
"We regret to announce that an insidious disease is affecting the Division, and the result is a hurricane of poetry. Subalterns have been seen with a notebook in one hand, and bombs in the other absently walking near the wire in deep communication with their muse. Even Quartermasters with "books, note, one" and "pencil, copying" break into song while arguing the point re "boots. gum, thigh". The Editor would be obliged if a few of the poets would break into prose as the paper cannot live by poems alone."Nonetheless, much of the space in the paper was taken up by poems. Two typical examples are given below.
Realizing Men must laugh, Some Wise Man devised the Staff : Dressed them up in little dabs Of rich variegated tabs : Taught them how to win the War On A.F.Z. 354 : Let them lead the Simple Life Far from all our vulgar strife : Nightly gave them downy beds For their weary, aching heads : Lest their relatives might grieve Often, often gave them leave, Decorations too, galore : What on earth could man wish more? Yet, alas, or so says Rumour, He forgot a sense of Humour! The world wasn't made in a day, And Eve didn't ride on a bus, But most of the world's in a sandbag, The rest of its plastered on us.Read more about this topic: Wipers Times
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
““Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry ‘cept a beadle on boxin’ day, or Warren’s blackin’ or Rowland’s oil, or some o’ them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)