Where Poppies Grow - Neogic

World War I Poetry Isaac Rosenberg

Dead Man’s Dump

This is one of the most graphic poems of this collection, the hell-like
conditions of the battlefield being described in unrelenting detail.

TASK 37 Make notes on your personal reaction to reading this poem. What has the
poet set out to achieve by writing of such horror? Has he succeeded?

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World War I Poetry Isaac Rosenberg

Glossary: the front parts of gun carriages with two wheels
limbers
ichor a bloodlike fluid or a watery, fetid discharge from a
wound – but the reference to immortality that follows
suggests Greek mythology, meaning fluid flowing like
blood in the veins of the gods

Returning, We Hear the Larks

Soldiers, returning exhausted from the Front to their camp, hear larks
heralding a new day. For a moment, they forget the war, but only for
a moment, remembering that death still lurks.

TASK 38 Make notes on how you interpret the final stanza of this short but effective
poem.

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

WILFRED OWEN 1893 - 1918

Owen was born in Shropshire of mixed Welsh and English ancestry, the
eldest of four children. In order to afford lessons at University College,
Reading, he worked in a church as a lay assistant. Prior to the war, he
worked as a private tutor in Bordeaux. In 1915, he enlisted, and later was
commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment and sent
to France. Suffering from shell shock, he was sent to Craiglockhart
Hospital, Edinburgh, where he met Siegfried Sassoon, who was to have
such an influence on his poetry. After returning to France, he was killed
leading his men into action just one week before the end of the war at the
age of 25.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

This is a sonnet lamenting the slaughter of the country’s youth.

TASK 39 Make notes on the religious elements contained in this poem.

Here are some notes that you might like to add to your own:

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

Throughout the sonnet there is a spiritual theme, evidence, no doubt, of his
upbringing and deeply held religious beliefs. (For further reading:
‘Maundy Thursday’, an early poem by Owen.)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Here is a shocking and bitter indictment of those who would glorify
war.

TASK 40 Make notes on how Owen has used precise descriptive language to arouse
emotions in his reader.

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

Exposure

This is another unrelenting picture of life in the trenches.

TASK 41 Make notes on Owen’s use of language in this poem, in particular, how he
uses various poetic techniques.

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

Glossary: an outward bulge in a line of military attack or defence
salient
glozed an obscure word meaning ‘explained away,
extenuated, palliated’. (In this context, it does not
make a great deal of sense, nor is it a particularly
effective half-rhyme. The original hand-written
manuscripts are frequently unclear and we wonder if
the word should be ‘glazed’.)

Insensibility

This is a profound commentary on how men coped emotionally with
the first-hand experience of the horrors of war and a final
condemnation of those who chose to distance themselves from them.

TASK 42 Make notes on how Owen’s first-hand experience has given him the right
to comment. To whom might this poem be addressed?

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

Look again at some of the earlier poems you have studied; in particular,
look at those by Rupert Brooke and Julian Grenfell and ask what Owen
might have thought of their patriotic outpourings.

• In the second stanza, he refers again to those who have subjugated
their feelings. They prefer not to consider how many men are being
killed around them and instead they imbue ‘Chance’ or ‘Fate’ with
optimism.

(For a greater understanding of the soldier’s view on this, read Owen’s
poem, ‘The Chances’.)

• ‘the reckoning of their shilling’ is a reference to conscription long ago,
when men were recruited by fooling them into accepting the gift of a
shilling, the King’s shilling.

• In the third stanza, there is almost a feeling of envy, from the
extremely imaginative and sensitive Owen, for those who are able to
suppress their imagination. In the same way that nurses and
emergency workers have to distance themselves emotionally from
involvement in the life and death situations with which they have to
deal, so these soldiers, of necessity, ‘Can laugh among the dying,
unconcerned.’

• In the next stanza, the focus moves to the soldier at home, happy in

his ignorance of what lies ahead of him. In the line, ‘He sings along
the march’ are the men of Hardy’s ‘The Men Who March Away’ while
in the following three lines are the exhausted troops of ‘Dulce Et
Decorum Est’ marching ‘From larger day to huger night.’ (Death)

• The mood of the fifth stanza changes and the meaning is more
obscure. ‘We wise’ are the veterans who have found ways of
anaesthetising their feelings. ‘How should we see our task / But
through his blunt and lashless eyes?’ creates the image once more of
‘the unknown soldier’ who in death is robbed of his immortality.

• The final stanza opens with an oblique reference to Shakespeare’s

Henry V (IV iii) ‘And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think
themselves accursed they were not here, / And hold their manhoods
cheap while any speaks / That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s
day.’ However forced and unreal the ‘happiness’ achieved by those
described throughout the earlier stanzas, Owen sees it as nobler and
so much greater than those who ‘By choice … made themselves
immune / To pity’. Was he referring here to the likes of Yeats, who
never fought but still felt that they could write about war from afar?
There was certainly no love lost between Yeats and Owen; Yeats
excluded Owen from the Oxford Book of Modern Verse and was
vitriolic in his attempt to justify his decision, saying, “My anthology
continues to sell, and the critics get more & more angry. When I
excluded Wilfred Owen, whom I consider unworthy of the poets'
corner of a country newspaper, I did not know I was excluding a
revered sandwich-board Man of the revolution & that some body has
put his worst & most famous poem in a glass-case in the British
Museum - however if I had known it I would have excluded him just

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

the same. He is all blood, dirt & sucked sugar stick (look at the
selection in Faber's Anthology-- he calls poets 'bards,' a girl a 'maid,' &
talks about 'Titanic wars'). There is every excuse for him but none for
those who like him...”

The Send-Off

In this poignant poem, unknown men from a nearby training camp
leave for the Front. Their send-off is subdued and the poet reflects on
their likely fate.

TASK 43 Comment on the atmosphere created in this poem, written towards the end
of the war. How does this picture differ from the jingoistic parades written
about at the beginning of this selection?

Historical Note: Owen wrote this poem, together with ‘Futility’ and
‘Strange Meeting’, in 1918 while at the Army Posting Camp at Ripon.
During the war, more than 350,000 soldiers passed through the camp on
their way to France.

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

Futility

This is a lament for one who has died in the cold night.

TASK 44 Make notes on the tone of this poem and how it differs from the other
poems by Owen in this selection.

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

Strange Meeting

This is one of the most profound and powerful poems of this War. The
soldier/poet dreams that he meets an enemy whom he killed the day
before. The enemy speaks to him and through his voice all the futility
of war is expressed.

TASK 45 Make notes on the way Owen has expressed the wastefulness of a lost life.
Do you think it significant that his most profound commentary on the
futility of war is spoken by the enemy?

Historical note: Owen is buried in France but a memorial to him was
erected in the grounds of Shrewsbury Abbey bearing the inscription, ‘I
AM THE ENEMY YOU KILLED, MY FRIEND’.

Benjamin Britten is widely held to be among the greatest British
composers of the 20th Century. One of his finest works, The War
Requiem, is a huge choral symphony that uses nine poems by Wilfred
Owen, interspersed with the Latin Mass for the Dead. The poems include

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World War I Poetry Wilfred Owen

‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ‘Futility’ and ‘Strange Meeting’. A
number of extracts can be viewed on ‘You Tube’.

The War Requiem was made into a film in 1988 with Nathaniel Parker as
Wilfred Owen. It is well worth watching if you can manage to find a
copy.

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World War I Poetry Robert Graves

ROBERT GRAVES 1895 - 1985

Graves was a prolific poet, translator and novelist, producing some 140
works during his long life, but he always considered himself a poet first
and foremost. Educated at King’s College School and Charterhouse, he
won an exhibition to St. John’s College, Oxford, but war broke out and, at
the age of 19, he enlisted immediately in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and
was sent to France where he was severely wounded in the Battle of the
Somme. He earned an early reputation as a war poet. He was a close friend
of Sassoon and Owen and his memoir of the First World War, Goodbye to
All That, is one of his best-known works.

Sergeant-Major Money

This poem tells a jaunty little tale of a regular Sergeant-Major and his
relationship with the newly recruited army.

TASK 46 Make notes on what this poem says about the chain of command at the
Front.

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World War I Poetry Robert Graves

Glossary: a large body of men ready for battle, especially
battalion an infantry unit forming part of a Brigade.
company
Arras a sub-division of an infantry batallion, usually
swaddies commanded by a Major or a Captain.
subaltern
pitboys The capital of the Pas de Calais department in
NW France, much destroyed in WWI.
butties
Slang name for common soldiers since the
Eighteenth Century.

Officer below the rank of Captain, especially a
Second Lieutenant.

a slang term for miners (although it is unlikely
that these two were, in fact, miners because
that was a reserved occupation during the war.)

Welsh slang term for close friends.

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World War I Poetry Robert Graves

Recalling War

Twenty years on, wounded survivors of the War look back and
question what it was all about.

TASK 47 Make notes on how the tone of this poem differs from those poems written
contemporaneously with the War.

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World War I Poetry Robert Graves

The Persian Version

In this satirical commentary on the Battle of Marathon, Graves raises
the whole question of the veracity of History as written after the
events.

Before studying this poem it may be useful to remind yourself of the
events of the Battle of Marathon:

Historical note:
The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the Greco-Persian
Wars. It effectively ended King Darius I of Persia’s attempt to conquer
Greece. The only account remaining comes from the Greek historian,
Herodotus, who describes it as a great victory for Greece whose relatively
small force defeated the mighty Persian Army with enormous bravery. (A
Greek soldier named Pheidippides was sent as a messenger to take the
news of the victory to Athens. He ran over a distance of 26 miles and 385
yards – the length designated for Marathon races today.)

TASK 48 Make notes on what you think Graves is saying about how history
chronicles war. What technique has he used in order to emphasise his
cynical viewpoint?

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World War I Poetry Edmund Blunden

EDMUND BLUNDEN 1896 - 1974

English poet, author and critic, Blunden was the longest-serving of the
First World War poets. He saw action in the front line at Ypres and the
Somme and was awarded the Military Cross. His account of his
experiences in the war, Undertones of War, reflects what was to become a
life-long obsession with the effects of war on humanity. He spent much of
his working life in the Far East. Blunden was a close friend of Graves and
Sassoon and was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University in
1966.

Two Voices

Two contrasting voices speak before a decisive battle and, as the
soldier advances, they continue to echo in his mind.

TASK 49 Make notes on the impact the two phrases, ‘There’s something in the air’
and ‘We’re going South, man’, have on the waiting soldiers.

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World War I Poetry Edmund Blunden

The Zonnebeke Road

In this battle-weary poem, troops begin a new day in the trenches.

TASK 50 Make notes on how the poet achieves such extreme clarity in expressing
his feelings about the trenches in which he finds himself living.

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World War I Poetry Edmund Blunden

Glossary: literally, mine-thrower – a mortar designed by the
minenwerfer Germans to throw extremely large explosive
missiles.

Vlamertinghe: Passing the Château, July 1917

The Château in this poem, out of reach of the German guns, is
described in lyrical terms in contrast to the mutilated landscape of the
front line.

TASK 51 What is your impression of this poem? What is the impact of the final two
lines?

Read ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by Keats and make your own comparisons
with this poem.

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World War I Poetry Edmund Blunden

Report on Experience

This is a reflective poem in which Blunden looks back on his
experiences of the War.

TASK 52 Occasionally, there is a poem that is quite obscure and open to personal
interpretation. From time to time, poets have been asked what a poem
means and replied that they have no idea, but that it must have meant
something when they wrote it. To a certain extent, we feel that this poem
might fall into that category.
Make notes on how you interpret this somewhat obscure poem.

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World War I Poetry Richard Aldington

RICHARD ALDINGTON 1892 - 1962

Richard Aldington was a leading exponent of the Imagist Group of Poets
(See below). He lived in Hampstead near Ezra Pound and D. H. Lawrence
and was married to the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, an American writer). He
joined the army in 1916 and was wounded in 1917 on the Western Front.
He returned home suffering from what is known today as Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder. How much was due to the war and how much to his wife
is debateable. While he was away at the war, she had a daughter by a friend
of Lawrence and then pursued a lesbian relationship with another writer.
Unsurprisingly, Arlington and H.D. parted but remained lifelong friends.

Battlefield

In this description of a desolate, war-torn landscape in which only
crosses are seen to multiply, the focus moves to the grave of an
unknown German soldier.

TASK 53 Make notes on your personal response to this poem.

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World War I Poetry Richard Aldington

Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early 20th Century Anglo-American poetry
that favoured precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The work of
the imagists mostly appeared in group publications between 1914 and
1917 and featured writing by many of the most significant names in
modernist British poetry.

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World War I Poetry Edgell Rickword

EDGELL RICKWORD 1898 - 1982

Edgell Rickword, English poet, critic, journalist and literary editor, was
born in Colchester, Essex. He served in the First World War as an officer,
at a very young age, and lost an eye. He was awarded the Military Cross
and became a published war poet although none of his poems about the
war was written until afterwards. He went on to become one of the leading
Communist intellectuals of the 1930s.

Winter Warfare

Cold, the great enemy of so many during the War, is personified in
this poem as a Colonel, devoid of all emotional involvement with both
sides.

TASK 54 Make notes on how effective you find the poet’s use of personification.

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World War I Poetry E. E. Cummings

E. E. CUMMINGS 1894 - 1962

Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a scholarly family
who encouraged his writing. He was first in his year at Harvard University.
He enlisted in the Ambulance Corps and went to France in 1917. After five
months, he was wrongfully arrested for espionage after expressing anti-
war views and sent to a detention camp but was released due to his father’s
political connections. Throughout his life, he wrote many poems, plays
and essays. He experimented with the actual form of poetry and, although
you may find his verse difficult to read, he is the second most-read poet in
America, after Robert Frost.

my sweet old etcetera

This surreal poem uses an alternative orthography to emphasise the
difference between the soldier at war and those left at home.

TASK 55 Make notes on your first impression of Cummings’ unusual style of
presentation.

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World War I Poetry E. E. Cummings

‘next to of course god america i

This is another surreal poem, almost like a rallying speech, presented
in a satirical voice.

TASK 56 Make notes on the structure of this poem and how closely it conforms to
the sonnet form.

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World War I Poetry E. E. Cummings

i sing of Olaf glad and big

Here is a very graphic poem about a conscientious objector and the
punishment and humiliation to which he was subjected.

TASK 57 Make notes on what you first felt when reading this poem. Is it clear where
Cummings’ sympathies lie? Would this have been a particularly shocking
poem for the American people?

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World War I Poetry John Peale Bishop

JOHN PEALE BISHOP 1892 - 1944

Bishop was born in West Virginia. He was very ill as a young man and did
not attend Princeton University until he was 21. While there, he was much
revered by literary figures including Edmund Wilson and F. Scott
Fitzgerald. He graduated in 1917 and served with the U.S. Army in Europe
for two years but never saw action. He fell in love with France and later
married and moved there where he raised three sons. He returned to the
United States in 1933 and enjoyed a distinguished career as a poet,
novelist and reviewer.

In the Dordogne

This is a reflective poem with a strangely mystical quality in which the
death of men in battle becomes timeless.

TASK 58 Make notes on the different levels at which you might understand the
meaning of this poem.

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World War I Poetry David Jones

DAVID JONES 1895 - 1974

David Jones was born of a Welsh father who had moved to England in
order to better himself. At the outbreak of the First World War, the young
Jones was contemplating a life in Art but joined the Welsh Fusiliers in
1915. He fought at the Battle of the Somme, was wounded and returned
home. He became well-known as a poet, essayist and engraver. His major
work, ‘In Parenthesis’, was much admired by his contemporaries.

from In Parenthesis

‘In Parenthesis’ is an epic poem of 187 pages, in seven parts. It was
first published in 1937. This extract is full of classical allusions
interspersed with the life of an ordinary soldier in the trenches.

TASK 59 Without attempting to decipher all the fairly obscure references, make
notes of your understanding of Jones’ narrative poem.

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World War I Poetry Laurence Binyon

LAURENCE BINYON 1869 – 1943

Binyon, poet, dramatist and art scholar, was born to a Quaker family in
Lancaster. Educated at St. Paul’s School and Oxford, after graduation, he
worked in the British Museum where he met and married the historian,
Cicely Margaret Powell. The couple had three daughters. Quakers are
generally against participation in war and against military service as
combatants. In the event, he was too old to enlist in the First World War
but went to the Western Front in 1916 to work for the Red Cross as a
medical orderly with an Ambulance Unit.

For the Fallen

(September 1914)

This poem is a eulogy in which the poet glorifies the sacrifice made by
so many.

TASK 60 What evidence can you find in the language and emotional appeal of this
poem to show that the writer is from an earlier age and poetic discipline?

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World War I Poetry Ezra Pound

EZRA POUND 1885 - 1972

Pound was born in the U.S. but spent most of his life in Europe. During
World War One, he worked as an editor in London, moving in 1920 to
Paris for four years. He next went to Italy where he was attracted by
Fascism and was arrested for treason after making anti-American
broadcasts. He was returned to the U.S. where he was considered unfit to
stand trial and was confined to a mental institution for 12 years. He is
regarded as one of the 20th Century’s most influential poets as an
exponent of Modernist Poetry. His involvement in the Imagist movement
was influenced by Japanese and Chinese poetry. He advocated free metre
and a more economical use of words and images.

from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

(Life and contacts)

Written in 1920, this work comprises 18 short poems in which Pound
uses two alter egos to discuss the first twelve years of his career. The
section that is included in Stalworthy’s selection comprises poems IV
and V, in which Pound expresses outrage at the carnage of The First
World War. Its completion was swiftly followed by his departure from
England.

TASK 61 Make notes on the theme of this section of Pound’s poem.

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World War I Poetry T S Eliot

T. S. ELIOT 1888 - 1965

Eliot was born into a wealthy family in the U.S. Having taken his degree
at Harvard University, he moved to Europe, studying first at the
Sorbonne in Paris and then at Oxford. He fast earned a reputation as a
notable poet, dramatist and literary critic. He became a British citizen in
1927 and, in 1948, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although
his poetic output was relatively small, he had a powerful influence on the
work of many other writers and was a leader in modernist literature.

Triumphal March

The poem was first published in 1931 but later was left out of Eliot’s
Collected Works. It is variously included under his Unfinished Poems
and as part of a longer poem, ‘Corolan’. Eliot greatly admired the
Elizabethan dramatists and wrote all his own plays in blank verse.
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus was of particular interest and makes it
easier to understand this somewhat obscure poem.

TASK 62 Make notes on the time sequences of Eliot’s poem and what you think his
intention was in jumping from age to age.

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World War I Poetry G K Chesterton

G. K. CHESTERTON 1874 - 1936

G. K. Chesterton was born in London into a middle-class family. He was
an influential writer of the early 20th Century, producing around 80
books, hundreds of poems, some 4000 essays, several plays and more
than 200 short stories, including his detective series, The Father Brown
Stories, later made into a successful film and long-running television
series. He was a renowned humorist and this is reflected in his whimsical
style of writing. At the outbreak of the First World War, Chesterton was
recruited by the head of Britain's War Propaganda Bureau to help shape
public opinion. His work for the Bureau included the writing of two
pamphlets and numerous articles in Britain's newspapers. His brother
enlisted in 1916 and was killed in France.

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

This simple poem, in the form of lines that might be found on
tombstones, makes a cynical comment on those responsible for the
war.

TASK 63 Make notes on how effective you find Chesterton’s style.

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World War I Poetry G K Chesterton

Read ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray (1716
– 1771) and make notes on how much Chesterton is parodying the older
and much longer poem.

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World War I Poetry Rudyard Kipling

RUDYARD KIPLING 1865 - 1936

Rudyard Kipling, British author and poet, was born in India. He is best
known for his works The Jungle Book, Just So Stories and his novel,
Kim. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but he was
frequently accused of militarism and imperialism in his writing. He
encouraged his only son to enlist at the age of 17. After he was killed at
the Battle of Loos, on his eighteenth birthday, Kipling wrote the poem,
‘My Boy Jack’, in which he said, ‘If any question why they died / Tell
them, because our fathers lied.’ These lines are repeated in ‘Epitaphs of
the War’.

Epitaphs of the War

1914 - 1918

Written in 1919, this is a series of 36 brief literary pieces
commemorating a panoply of those who did in the War.

TASK 64 Make brief notes on those epitaphs that impressed you most and say why
they did so. Then, consider the collection as a whole and make notes on
what Kipling is saying about the effects of the War.

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World War I Poetry Rudyard Kipling

The Rebel
For an insight into Kipling and his religious beliefs, we suggest you read
his poem ‘Recessional’.

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World War I Poetry Elizabeth Daryush

ELIZABETH DARYUSH 1887 - 1977

The daughter of the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges, Elizabeth had a private
education before studying at Oxford. While there, she met and married Ali
Akbar Daryush and then lived for a time in Persia (now Iran). Most of her
life was spent in Boars Hill, just outside Oxford. Opinion about her poetry
is divided: some regard it as archaic, melodramatic and ‘firmly rooted in
the Victorian Age’; others compare her to Thomas Hardy and admire her
for her use of disciplined syllabic meter to attain a subtle, socially
conscious voice.

Subalterns

Here is a short poem in the form of a conversation between a woman
and two officers.

TASK 65 Elizabeth Daryush disowned her first three volumes of poetry, which
included ‘Subalterns’, written in 1917. Make notes on your opinion of the
poem and say whether you agree with her decision to reject it.

It is perhaps unfair to judge a poet on the strength of one short poem. You
may like to read two other poems by Daryush: ‘Unknown Warrior’ and
‘Flanders Fields’.

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World War I Poetry May Wedderburn Cannan

MAY WEDDERBURN CANNAN 1893 - 1973

Born in Oxford, May was the daughter of the Dean of Trinity College. In
1911, at the age of 18, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and
trained as a nurse. At the beginning of the war, she spent four weeks at
Rouen, in France, helping to run a canteen there. She returned to Oxford
and helped her father run the Oxford University Press until 1918 when she
returned to France to work in the espionage department of the War Office
Department in Paris. She was engaged to a soldier who survived the war
but died in the influenza epidemic of 1919.

Rouen

26 April – 25 May 1915

This is the poet’s account of her work in the canteen at the railhead in
Rouen.

TASK 66 Philip Larkin chose this poem to be included in the Oxford Book of
Twentieth Century English Verse (1973), commenting that it had “all the
warmth and idealism of the VADS in the First World War. I find it
enchanting.” Make notes on your impressions of Cannan’s description of
her time in France.

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World War I Poetry Philip Larkin

The final four poems in this selection are by well-known poets born after the
First World War. Thus they are all retrospective poems, reflective in their
dealings with the War that was to change the world for ever, and together they
form a fitting close to this study.

PHILIP LARKIN 1922 - 1985

Larkin was born in Coventry. His poor eyesight meant that he was rejected
for military service at the time of the Second World War so that, unlike
many of his contemporaries, he was able to complete his degree course at
Oxford. He spent his working life as a University Librarian. Many regard
him as one of the greatest poets of the latter half of the Twentieth Century.
In 2003, he was voted ‘the nation’s best-loved poet’ and, in 2008, The
Times newspaper named him as the greatest post-war writer.

MCMXIV

Writing many years after the end of World War One, Larkin here
creates a highly visual picture of life before that time and laments the
loss of an age of innocence that was about to be destroyed for ever.

TASK 67 Larkin was writing retrospectively from a distance of some 50 years. You
are being asked to look back almost a century. How do your impressions
of that ‘Age of Innocence’ compare with Larkin’s?

Continue over

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World War I Poetry Philip Larkin

Should you have the opportunity to see Richard Attenborough’s film
Oh! What a Lovely War, this would give you a very immediate visual
picture of that happy Bank Holiday atmosphere of 1914.

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World War 1 Poetry Vernon Scannell

VERNON SCANNELL 1922 - 2007

Scannell was born in Lincolnshire and left school at 14. During World
War II, he served in the Gordon Highlanders, in France and North Africa.
He was imprisoned for desertion but released to take part in the Normandy
Landings. After VE Day, he deserted again and spent two years on the
run. He received a special award from the Wilfred Owen Society for his
contribution to war poetry. He married and had six children. He spent his
final years in West Yorkshire where he died at the age of 85 after a long
illness.

The Great War

Scannell’s reflective vision sums up the feeling that there has never
been another war that made more impact on human emotions.

TASK 68 Make notes on the powerful imagery that Scannell uses to recall ‘The
Great War’. What is the significance of the title?

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World War I Poetry Ted Hughes

TED HUGHES 1930 - 1998

Ted Hughes was born in West Yorkshire and spent his early years in a
rural community which, he said, “shaped his life”. He studied English at
Cambridge and went on to be a most successful poet and children’s
writer. He was married to the American poet, Sylvia Plath, who
committed suicide in 1963. It was the beginning of a particularly stormy
personal life. Hughes was awarded the Order of Merit and became the
British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. He is generally regarded
as one of the finest poets of his generation.

Six Young Men

The poet muses on six young men who were killed in action but who
live on, forever young, in a forty-year-old photograph.

TASK 69 Make notes on the contemplative approach that Hughes has adopted in this
poem.

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World War I Poetry Douglas Dunn

DOUGLAS DUNN 1942 -

Douglas Dunn, OBE, Scottish poet, academic and critic, is generally
regarded as one of the leading poets of our time writing in the English
language. He is the author of many books of poetry as well as radio and
television plays and is the recipient of numerous awards. In 1991, he was
appointed Professor in the School of English at St. Andrew’s University.

War Blinded

Sixty years after the event, Dunn thinks about a soldier blinded in The
Great War and considers the meaning of the life he has led.

TASK 70 How much of Dunn’s poem is admiration of the soldier and how much is
sympathy? How effective do you find his treatment of the subject?

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World War I Poetry Douglas Dunn

There is a striking similarity between this poem and Wilfred Owen’s
poem ‘Disabled’. You might find it interesting to compare the two poems,
one written during the war and this one some sixty years later.

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