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Summary
Summary
The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, poets whose words commemorate the conflict more personally and as enduringly as monuments in stone. Lines such as 'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?' and 'They shall not grow old, as they that are left grow old' have come to express the feelings of a nation about the horrors and aftermath of war. This new anthology provides a definitive record of the achievements of the Great War poets. As well as offering generous selections from the celebrated soldier-poets, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Ivor Gurney, it also incorporates less well-known writing by civilian and women poets. Music hall and trench songs provide a further lyrical perspective on the War. A general introduction charts the history of the war poets' reception and challenges prevailing myths about the war poets' progress from idealism to bitterness. The work of each poet is prefaced with a biographical account that sets the poems in their historical context. Although the War has now passed out of living memory, its haunting of our language and culture has not been exorcised. Its poetry survives because it continues to speak to and about us.
Author Notes
Tim Kendall has taught at the universities of Oxford, Newcastle, and Bristol before becoming Professor and Head of English at the University of Exeter. His publications include Modern English War Poetry (OUP, 2006), and The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry (ed.) (OUP, 2007), and he is writing the VSI on War Poetry (forthcoming, 2014). He is also co-editor of the Complete Literary Works of Ivor Gurney, (forthcoming, OUP).
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* More than any other conflict, the Great War, the war to end all wars, changed the world, sufficiently so that historian John Lukacs has remarked that the twentieth century really begins with it. It certainly made poetry modern common in diction, grammar, and subject matter while fully cognizant of the poetic past as did no other phenomenon of its time. For once they had seen what this monstrously brutal new form of warfare was, soldier-poets determined to make readers appreciate its filth, pain, and horror. None were more conscientious about this than the British and Irish solder-poets, and it is their work that appears in Kendall's new anthology. Kendall also includes poems by civilians who wrote most powerfully about war (Hardy, Kipling, and the now-obscure, then-famous Wilfrid Gibson) and several women who served in field hospitals and as ambulance drivers. The collection concludes with a sterling small treasury of Music-Hall and Trench Songs (Kendall admits to cleaning the latter up for general consumption). Kendall sketches the life of each poet included, glosses military jargon and slang terms as well as place names and literary allusions in the endnotes, and includes two previously unpublished poems by a personal favorite, the composer-poet Ivor Gurney. A timely memorial and a great anthology.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
Though one might wonder why another anthology of WW I poetry, this is an exceptional collection. The scholarly apparatus is first-rate, from the general introduction and masterful time line to the author introductions and the extensive and detailed explanatory notes. Kendall (Univ. of Exeter, UK; author of Modern English War Poetry, CH, Jun'07, 44-5501, and editor of The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry, 2009) did an excellent job of collecting and contextualizing the usual major poets, along with some important minor poets. Women war poets, including Sinclair, Mew, Borden, Cole, and Cannan, are represented ably. In addition, an extensive selection of music-hall and trench songs is included, usefully annotated as well. The Georgians, as opposed to the modernists, are almost without exception represented in this volume, and for good reason: their work was the contemporaneous response to the Great War, even if insufficiently read or appreciated at the time. A pragmatic bibliography and index round out this pleasing volume, which will be useful for lovers of poetry and students of the period. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. B. Adler Georgia Southwestern State University
Table of Contents
| Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) |
| A. E. Housman (1859-1936) |
| May Sinclair (1863-1946) |
| W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) |
| Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) |
| Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) |
| Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) |
| Robert Service (1874-1958) |
| Edward Thomas (1878-1917) |
| Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962) |
| Mary Borden (1886-1968) |
| Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) |
| Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) |
| Julian Grenfell (1888-1915) |
| T. P. Cameron Wilson (1888-1918) |
| Patrick Shaw Stewart (1888-1917) |
| Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) |
| Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) |
| Arthur Graeme West (1891-1917) |
| Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) |
| Margaret Postgate Cole (1893-1980) |
| May Wedderburn Cannan (1893-1973) |
| Charles Sorley (1895-1915) |
| Robert Graves (1895-1985) |
| David Jones (1895-1974) |
| Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) |
| Edgell Rickword (1898-1982) |
| Music Hall and Trench Songs |