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    Poems
    Poems
    Poems
    Ebook75 pages36 minutes

    Poems

    By Wilfred Owen

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1963
    Author

    Wilfred Owen

    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke.

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    Reviews for Poems

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    • 5/5
      One hundred years after his death, Owen remains perhaps the single most tragic figure in the history of poet. He stands as a stark reminder of the sheer waste of the first World War, and a paean to the modern ideals of individuality and self-expression. Utterly heartbreaking, no matter how many times I read him.
    • 5/5
      'Tis a pitifully small collection of poems gathered here, considering Owen is often called the best of the World War I poets.His "Dulce et Decorum Est" is perhaps one of the most anthologized English poems from that era. Easily accessible, I can remember reading and pondering it when I was still in high school. That poem and several others in this slim volume still apply. Wars never really resolve anything, and yet they go on and on, as if humankind never learns anything at all. This collection is gem-like, marred only by a few incompleted fragments, and I wondered why they were even included. Probably because there were so few finished poems, a true tragedy of that war. Just twenty-five years old and only beginning to find his voice as poet, Wilfred Owen died a week before the armistice. And yet he lives on in these poems, THE WORKS OF WILFRED OWEN. An important book for any collector of serious literature.
    • 5/5
      Ah fuck you war! Buy his poems. He was good. He was really, really good.

    Book preview

    Poems - Wilfred Owen

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Wilfred Owen

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Poems

    Author: Wilfred Owen

    Release Date: August 10, 2008 [EBook #1034]

    Last Updated: February 4, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***

    Produced by Alan R. Light, Gary M. Johnson, and David Widger

    POEMS

    by Wilfred Owen

    With an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon

    Introduction

    In writing an Introduction such as this it is good to be brief. The poems printed in this book need no preliminary commendations from me or anyone else. The author has left us his own fragmentary but impressive Foreword; this, and his Poems, can speak for him, backed by the authority of his experience as an infantry soldier, and sustained by nobility and originality of style. All that was strongest in Wilfred Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance, would be irrelevant and unseemly. The curiosity which demands such morsels would be incapable of appreciating the richness of his work.

    The discussion of his experiments in assonance and dissonance (of which 'Strange Meeting' is the finest example) may be left to the professional critics of verse, the majority of whom will be more preoccupied with such technical details than with the profound humanity of the self- revelation manifested in such magnificent lines as those at the end of his 'Apologia pro Poemate Meo', and in that other poem which he named 'Greater Love'.

    The importance of his contribution to the literature of the War cannot be decided by those who, like myself, both admired him as a poet and valued him as a friend. His conclusions about War are so entirely in accordance with my own that I cannot attempt to judge his work with any critical detachment. I can only affirm that he was a man of absolute integrity of mind. He never wrote his poems (as so many war-poets did) to make the effect of a personal gesture. He pitied others; he did not pity himself. In the last year of his life he attained a clear vision of what he needed to say, and these poems survive him as his true and splendid testament.

    Wilfred Owen was born at Oswestry on 18th March 1893. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute, and matriculated at London University in 1910. In 1913 he obtained a private tutorship near Bordeaux, where he remained until 1915. During this period he became acquainted with the eminent French poet, Laurent Tailhade, to whom he showed his early verses, and from whom he received considerable encouragement. In 1915, in spite of delicate health, he joined the Artists' Rifles O.T.C., was gazetted to the Manchester Regiment, and served with their 2nd Battalion in France from December 1916 to June 1917, when he was invalided home. Fourteen months later he returned to the Western Front and served with the same Battalion, ultimately commanding a Company.

    He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry while taking part in some heavy fighting on 1st

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