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Rating: 
Summary: Wilfred Owen: The Poet who Knew the Truth
Review: As a 13 year old boy I do not consider myself an expert on World War I poetry. Yet still I can tell that the poems of Wilfred Owen are a world apart from the likes of Rupert Brooke and other such optimists. For sure his portrayal of the war in such poems as 'Dulce et Decorum est' is more realistic than that of 'The Soldier' which talks of how as a soldier dies, he thinks of how glad he is glad that he has helped England, and how his heart is at peace under an English heaven. It seems to me that his superiors might have encouraged him to right pleasant poetry to please those back at the 'Home Front'. Yet Wilfred Owen's poetry also reflects his high level of education. Combining the skill and beauty of Brooke, with the harsh reality of such poems as 'The General' and 'To the Warmongers' to create a unique mastery of portraying the life of a first world war soldier.
Rating:
Summary: Wilfred Owen: The Poet who Knew the Truth
Review: As a 13 year old boy I do not consider myself an expert on World War I poetry. Yet still I can tell that the poems of Wilfred Owen are a world apart from the likes of Rupert Brooke and other such optimists. For sure his portrayal of the war in such poems as 'Dulce et Decorum est' is more realistic than that of 'The Soldier' which talks of how as a soldier dies, he thinks of how glad he is glad that he has helped England, and how his heart is at peace under an English heaven. It seems to me that his superiors might have encouraged him to right pleasant poetry to please those back at the 'Home Front'. Yet Wilfred Owen's poetry also reflects his high level of education. Combining the skill and beauty of Brooke, with the harsh reality of such poems as 'The General' and 'To the Warmongers' to create a unique mastery of portraying the life of a first world war soldier.
Rating:
Summary: If ever we need to heed this poet it is now
Review: Seeing a posting for a new biography of Wilfred Owen reminded me to return to this anthology of his poems. Every war has produced great poets and WWI was fixed in our minds by the sensitive words of Siegfried Sassoon and especially Wilfred Owen. Writing from the trenches Owen managed to keep his eyes and mind and heart wide open while he witnessed the horrid plunder that surrounded him.. That he was able to transpose these experiences into the transcendentally beautiful poems that fill this book is a major wonder. Yes, WWII had WH Auden et al and the hungry monster machine of war was again made into words. And poets wrote of Korea, of Vietnam, and other countries' poets wrote of other wars. But again the threats and facts cloud our lives and world, and their words seemingly fall on deaf ears. Would that we could take heed of the poems of such perfection as those here by Wilfred Owen. This is the time to study this book........daily.
Rating:
Summary: If ever we need to heed this poet it is now
Review: Seeing a posting for a new biography of Wilfred Owen reminded me to return to this anthology of his poems. Every war has produced great poets and WWI was fixed in our minds by the sensitive words of Siegfried Sassoon and especially Wilfred Owen. Writing from the trenches Owen managed to keep his eyes and mind and heart wide open while he witnessed the horrid plunder that surrounded him.. That he was able to transpose these experiences into the transcendentally beautiful poems that fill this book is a major wonder. Yes, WWII had WH Auden et al and the hungry monster machine of war was again made into words. And poets wrote of Korea, of Vietnam, and other countries' poets wrote of other wars. But again the threats and facts cloud our lives and world, and their words seemingly fall on deaf ears. Would that we could take heed of the poems of such perfection as those here by Wilfred Owen. This is the time to study this book........daily.
Rating:
Summary: The Bleak Genius of Wilfred Owen
Review: This is a wonderful book, and one of the most powerful collections of anti-war poems ever put together. Wilfred Owen was not a man who was describing war from the safety of his own home. He was in the thick of it, and he paid the ultimate price.'Anthem for Doomed Youth' may just be the most powerful of all anti-war poems, and it was voted 8th in a list of Britain's favourite poems in a BBC poll. This poem like Owen's work generally is written in an unpretentious style. His poetry is very moving, but without being sentimental. He's painting pictures with words, and the pictures aren't pretty. All his renowned work is here, including 'Dulce et Decorum est', 'Disabled', and 'Mental Cases'. The notes are very interesting, as you'd expect from a literary heavyweight like C. Day Lewis, and there's also some of Owen's non war poetry, but that's still bleak! If you want to buy any book of Owen's work, I'd recommend this one for starters.
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing beauty
Review: War and poetry- two concepts infrequently mentioned, much less allied, in the same breath. Yet during World War I a number of writers took the horrific experiences of the Western Front and turned them into some of the twentieth century's finest, most disturbing poetry. Among these "war poets", Wilfred Owen is indisputably one of the greatest. From the opening declaration " Above all, I am not concerned with Poetry... My subject is War, and the pity of War..." through the dreamlike madness of "Strange Meeting" to the elegiac fury of "Anthem for Doomed Youth", Owen hones the poetic craft he learned as a juvenile romantic versifier into a rapier on which he skewers the futility of the war, the blind official stupidity which kept it going, and the inhumanity shown by each side to its own men as well as the enemy. Killed in action not long before the Armistice, Owen saw little publication of his work. However, his verse- carefully arranged, meticulously researched and documented by Cecil Day Lewis- is not only his epitaph. As relevant and affecting today as in 1918, it's as fine a counter-argument as any ever written against those who dismiss poetry as flowery nonsense. And for the rest of us? Few media can express the true nature and terrible costs of the First World War as eloquently as poetry at its finest can- and Owen provides it in plenty.
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