We read Wilfred Owen’s War Poems, with a little help from Jon Stallworthy
War Poems – the blurb
2018 marks a hundred years since the end of the First World War. Owen’s death in battle, a few days before the Armistice, was a disastrous loss to English letters and left a legacy of the finest poetry that vividly captured the unimaginable horrors of the Great War. This volume, edited by Oxford Professor Jon Stallworthy, gathers together the poems for which Owen is best known, and which represent his most important contribution to poetry in the twentieth century.
Only for the classroom
Doesn’t everyone remember Wilfred Owen from school? War poems about men, boys, knee deep in the trenches dying. I certainly remember and at the time wasn’t that keen. Fast forward 20 years, an interest in history and a quest to read more poetry later lead me to Mr Owen once more (no not the Take That kind). What would I make of him second time round?
Doomed Youth
To get to the poems you must first read through a biography and an introduction taking you through Owen’s life and poems. It’s well worth reading so don’t skip. Owen’s finished poems follow but it is ‘The Fragments’ section, Owen’s unfinished poems, that hit home the most. He too was a doomed youth (incidentally probably my favorite Owen poem). Oh what could have been if he had lived.
I put my best Joe Nutt pants on and really studied each poem, saying it aloud in my head. There are reoccurring themes – religion, Greek heroes, reference to other people’s poems. Owen repeatedly references nature, snow and smiling – although not in any ‘isn’t this lovely’ Lee kind of way. I still don’t think I’ve nailed reading poetry but I’ve definitely progressed since the classroom and I definitely preferred Owen’s War Poems second time around.
