Poetry
In the early weeks of the war, British poets responded with an outpouring of literary production. Rudyard Kipling's For all we have and are aroused most comment. Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate, contributed a poem Wake Up, England! at the outbreak of war that he later wished suppressed., John Masefield, who later succeeded Bridges as Poet Laureate, wrote August, 1914, a poem that was widely admired.
Wilfred Owen was killed in battle; but poems created at the front did achieve popular attention after the war's end,.e.g., Dulce Et Decorum Est, Insensibility, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility and Strange Meeting. In preparing for the publication of his collected poems, Owen tried to explain:
| “ | 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.
This brief statement became the basis for a play based on the friendship between Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in 1917. |
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The poem In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae, continues to be one of the most popular wartime poems in Canada, and has achieved a status where it is recognized as one of the country's most notable unofficial symbols.
Read more about this topic: World War I In Literature
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers’ wives.”
—Hamlin Garland (1860–1940)
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)