Wilfred Owen (1) (1893–1918)

"Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also…" (pg. 2)

The poetry of the Great War is a rich seam, but what is most striking about Wilfred Owen is that, while his subject is always "War, and the pity of War" (as his famous Preface puts it), he is much more than a 'war poet'. Whereas other 'war poets' seemed to work within their field, Owen instead seems like a generational talent, the next great English poet, who because of the tragedy of his time is driven to that same field and, the horror of it being so total, cannot turn his verse to other things until his art has made some sense of it. And, of course, a German bullet, from somewhere along the Sambre Canal a week before the Armistice, denied him the opportunity of ever doing so.

So we are left with the poems of a great poet who, before being killed at the age of 25, had only had the opportunity to speak of War. And, in that short time, he managed to craft poems that have shaped not only our impressions of that particular war, but conflict in general. Some of his well-known pieces, like 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Strange Meeting' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est', are not only masterly 'war poems' but masterly poems, worthy of inclusion in any anthology of the best of English verse. Even lesser-known pieces have their own ingenuity ('Parable of the Old Men and the Young', for example, subverts the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac).

What we have then, and can see even in this slim 60-page volume titled The Pity of War, is an artist whose poetry refuses to be ring-fenced as 'war poetry' and stands as great poetry without qualification. Owen's is not a poetry that tears down what came before in disillusioned bitterness, even as he speaks against "the old Lie" in 'Dulce et Decorum Est'. "Shelley would be stunned," he writes in 'A Terre', but while Owen pulls English poetry aways from churchyards and daffodils and towards the reality of guns and poison gas, he still remains part of that tradition, not only in structure but in his vision.

A good example of this is 'Spring Offensive', which begins with a tranquil description of a natural spring scene, verse of which Keats would be proud, before suddenly soldiers launch an attack across that field and all hell and fury breaks loose. This harmony in the face of disharmony, this natural grace present in Owen's work, perhaps explains why he has become the most influential poet from the fine ranks of that war. Because his success in presenting his qualities, his talents, only further emphasises the question that war poetry asks us to ponder: have we, as a society or as individuals, lived up to the sacrifice made? "The centuries will burn rich loads With which we groaned," Owen writes in 'Miners', a line that could refer not only to coal miners but to any ancestor who toiled for their descendants' future gain. As Remembrance Sunday gathers headlines this year not with poppies and poetry but with riots and sullied memorials and political grandstanding, we reflect more than ever on whether we've truly kept this sacred covenant. Even without such toxic and indulgent events to throw the solemn sacrifice into relief, with poetry as enduring as Owen's, the question remains fresh every year.… (altro)