Reviews

Three Poets of the First World War by Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Jon Stallworthy, Ivor Gurney

jiayuanc's review against another edition

4.0

Difficult to put a stars rating on a poetry collection like this. More than ever I wish I could put half stars here, would have been 3.5 to satisfy my brain on this one, rounding up to 4. I had previously read (on e-book) "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen" edited by Cecil Day-Lewis which was excellent. I picked up this book to get some of Owen's writings in physical copy, as well as to read from Gurney and Rosenberg for the first time. There's a fair introduction, suggestions for further reading and good notes at the back for each poem. For me, this book does a better job of laying out the poems (in chronological order by each poet) than "The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry" (grouped by theme, and no dates on the poems itself forcing the reader to flip to the end of the anthology to view them) though I acknowledge that these two books have different goals, thus their differing layouts.

Gurney spent time in a hospital / asylum where the latter part of his poems were written. Makes for interesting reading as his poems are ordered in chronological order, and as Hurd (1978) says in the end notes: "the best of [Gurney's] asylum poems [...] make terrible reading ... they sound like the utterings of a man whose mind may perhaps have momentarily lost its balance"

Owen remains the best poet out of the three for me.

astridsbridg's review against another edition

4.0

Loved this. Passionate and deeply emotional; visceral portrayal of WW1. My favorite section came at the end (Wilfred Owen), but the whole book was excellent & the preface was thorough. The notes at the end are detailed and very helpful for background & contextual knowledge. Loved it.