Declare Books Conducive To The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Original Title:	Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
ISBN:	0811201325 (ISBN13: 9780811201322)
Edition Language:	English
Setting:	Oswestry,1893(United Kingdom) University of London,1910(United Kingdom) Bordeaux,1913(France) …more Sambre-Oise Canal,1918(France) Monroe, North Carolina,1997(United States) …less

The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen Paperback | Pages: 192 pages

Commentary Supposing Books The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

I make no apology for starting with one of Owen’s more well-known poems Dulce Et Decorum Est:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The title is from Horace: It is sweet and right to die for your country.
This collection includes Owen’s pre-war poems and lots of fragments of poems. It is easy to see that the really powerful standout poems are all war poems; there is a vast difference between these poems and his early work, hardly surprising. Most of Owen’s poems were published posthumously and those that were published were in an In-house magazine at Craiglockhart hospital. There is a memorial piece at the end by Edmund Blunden written in 1931 which contains extracts from his letters and is fascinating as it shows some of the ways his thought was developing. The passion and compassion of Owen towards the suffering and disenchanted stands out. Owen understands the men he is with; he understands soldiers and their role and he is angry on their behalf with those in power and those who criticise from the side-lines:

except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful
dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling
of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell.
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mind. These men are worth
Your tears: you are not worth their merriment.

Owen’s letters show how his political thought was developing in a pacifist direction and he says that his conception of Christianity was incompatible with pure patriotism. He does not shirk addressing difficult issues including the effect of war on mental health in the poem “Mental Cases” and placing blame where he thinks it lies:

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

— These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
— Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
— Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness
This could easily become a run through of the poems; they are now well known and much studied and still retain their power. If you haven’t read them, do have a look, but I’ll sign off this review with Anthem for Doomed Youth:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

Details Epithetical Books The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Title	:	The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Author	:	Wilfred Owen
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	New Directions Book
Pages	:	Pages: 192 pages
Published	:	January 17th 1965 by New Directions (first published 1918)
Categories	:	Poetry. Classics. War. World War I. Fiction

Rating Epithetical Books The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Ratings: 4.34 From 3336 Users | 121 Reviews

Weigh Up Epithetical Books The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Too real to stand much, the truth of war untold is.

Umpteenth re-read of some of the most powerful poetry ever written and a big reason I am a committed pacifist since I first read this collection as a child.

For anyone out there that wishes to understand the effects of war in the minds of a young man, read his poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" as it is one of the greatest I have read, written in such a descriptive manner you feel as if you were the one dying in the trenches. Truly beautiful in the traumatic of it all. Dulce Et Decorum Est read by Christopher Eccleston

Harrowing beyond belief, Owens poems contain a certain quality to them that causes shock and horror while also causing the reader to exude sympathy and sadness. I can only begin to imagine the atrocities that soldiers like him experienced on the war front, by the millions they were slain and Owen captured it all within the lines of his poetry. For example, in the poem Arms and the boy the reader is giving a horrid picture of a young boy carrying a bayonet-blade getting used to the touch of its

We covered almost all of Owen's poetry in my English class. However, with Owen, poetry is not a chore, but Owen's cognitive approach to war has really changed the way that I, and millions of others, view any form of belligerence (especially between nations). As I have no doubt that most of you know, Owen's poetry is against any form of military adventurism, the callousness of society, politics and religion ('What passing bells for those that die as cattle?'), and (most imp. I guess) the plight

"At a Calvary near the Ancre" by Wilfred Owen (late 1917-early 1918).Here is a rendition of the poem by the tenor Peter Pears from the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flEp_...Agnus Dei (chorus; Latin) interspersed with Owen's "At a Calvary near the Ancre" (tenor solo)Tenor:One ever hangs where shelled roads part.In this war He too lost a limb,But His disciples hide apart;And now the Soldiers bear with Him.Chorus:Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,dona eis

I named my son Owen. Need I say more. Ok, well Rupert,Sigfried and Wilfred were just too odd for a little guy to carry through school.