poet and former professor of English Literature, Jon Stallworthy, tells the story of the lives and work of twelve major poets of the First World War and provides selections of their best work.
The First World War began with flagwaving, parades and poets inspired by abstract ideals, In part this reflected the national mood, but it revealed an almost universal failure to understand what modern mass warfare would really mean.
The story of the 'war poets' is also the story of an awakening to the full horror of what the twentieth century came to know as 'The Great War'.
Wilfred Owen said, 'My subject is War and the pity of War', He also said 'true Poets must be truthful', The best war poetry was the work of writers who were also serving soldiers and was born out of their desire to tell the truth about what it was to be a soldier in the trenches what it felt like, what it did to you and what it did to your fellow soldiers, friend or foe.
The greatness of the poetry lay not just in the writer's talent, but in the unflinching accuracy with which it portrayed their terrible circumstances.
I found this a very moving book about some of the soldier poets of WW, For each poet there is a brief biography, a selection of poems and some analyses of these and photos and drawings, It would perhaps have been nice if the biographies had been more detailed, Lovely volume with photographs and short biography of the poets, The poems themselves give an interesting insider's take on WWI and the verse form makes it all the more poignant, Jon Howie StallworthyJanuaryNovemberFBA FRSL was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, He was also a Fellow and was twice Acting President of Wolfson College, a poet, and a literary critic, Fromto, he was the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell, Stallworthy was born in London, His parents, Sir John Stallworthy and Margaret Stallworthy, were from New Zealand and moved to England in, Stallworthy started writing poems when he was only seven years old, He was educated at the Dragon School, Rugby School and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won
the Newdigate prize, His works include seven volumes of poetry, and biographies of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice, He Jon Howie StallworthyJanuaryNovemberFBA FRSL was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, He was also a Fellow and was twice Acting President of Wolfson College, a poet, and a literary critic, Fromto, he was the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell, Stallworthy was born in London, His parents, Sir John Stallworthy and Margaret Stallworthy, were from New Zealand and moved to England in, Stallworthy started writing poems when he was only seven years old, He was educated at the Dragon School, Rugby School and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize, His works include seven volumes of poetry, and biographies of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice, He has edited several anthologies and is particularly known for his work on war poetry, While researching the local history of New Zealand Stallworthy discovered an obscure volume entitled Early Northern Wairoa written by his great grandfather, John Stallworthy, in.
From this book he learned that his great great grandfather, George Stallworthy, had left his birthplace of Preston Bissett in Buckinghamshire, England, for the Marquesas as a missionary.
This discovery led in turn to him finding family related letters in the archives of the London Missionary Society, Stallworthy's book A Familiar Tree Oxford University Press,is a collection of poetry inspired by events depicted in these documents, Singing School is an autobiography which emphasises Stallworthy's development as a poet, Stallworthy wrote a short summary of war poetry in the introductory chapter to the Oxford Book of War Poetry Edited by Jon Stallworthy, Oxford University Press,, as well as editing several anthologies of war poetry and writing a biography of Wilfred Owen.
Inhe received the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award from the Wilfred Owen Association, In the course of his literary career, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy, sitelink.