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mxmrow's review against another edition
4.0
A good range mostly within the limits of white English men and women writing about the western front. Not the breadth of British citizens involved in the First World War let alone wider First World War poets involved not connected to British ex-colonies.
bjork5ever's review against another edition
4.0
An amazing collection!!! Covers everything you might need, with great historical notes at the beginning. Studying history through poetry is very insightful to the moods and attitudes of the time, and if you're looking to learn more about the first world war, this might be a great place to start! I recommend reading "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke and "Does it Matter?" by Siegfried Sassoon to show contrasting viewpoints before and after the horrors of modern warfare are revealed.
roseandisabella's review against another edition
"
The Soldier’s Death
By Anne, Countess of Winchilsea (1660–1720)
TRAIL all your pikes, dispirit every drum,
March in a slow procession from afar,
Ye silent, ye dejected men of war!
Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb!
Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner;
For see! where on the bier before ye lies
The pale, the fall’n, the untimely sacrifice
To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour. "
The Soldier’s Death
By Anne, Countess of Winchilsea (1660–1720)
TRAIL all your pikes, dispirit every drum,
March in a slow procession from afar,
Ye silent, ye dejected men of war!
Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb!
Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner;
For see! where on the bier before ye lies
The pale, the fall’n, the untimely sacrifice
To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour. "
mar_nieves's review against another edition
5.0
A miña comfort read. podería falar disto durante 48 horas solo pausando para darlle un sorbito ao meu mencía.
jiayuanc's review against another edition
3.0
A decent anthology. My star rating here is reflective of the book's outline. I disliked the way the editors have chosen to lay out the poems. The chapters list a general theme, without any listing of the titles, authorship and dates of the poems within each theme, which makes finding a specific poem a bit more difficult. I read from the e-book version, which did not provide any index of first lines either, though it looks like this might be available in the print version (?). Mini bios of the poets themselves are relegated to the back of the book, along with the date when the poem was written. For a similar but far better anthology, I would suggest readers look at "Lads" which is a WW1 poetry collection put together by Martin Taylor of the Imperial War Museum in London.
kingorgan's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness, Death, War, and Panic attacks/disorders
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
I won't review each poem itself (there are quite a few), but the arrangement and introduction, as well as the scope covered. In those areas I think this book is a solid introductory compilation: it primarily includes English-language poets, as well as a few French, German, Italian, Russian, Hebrew. The first edition included poems from only two women: Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva.
The poets in this, the second edition, are, in order of appearance:
The poets in this, the second edition, are, in order of appearance:
Thomas Hardy, 2 poems
Rupert Brooke, 2 poems
Julian Grenfell, 1 poem
John McCrae, 1 poem
Alan Seeger, 1 poem
Charles Hamilton Sorley, 3 poems
Edward Thomas, 12 poems
Edmund Blunden, 12 poems
Ivor Gurney, 7 poems
Robert Graves, 2 poems
Siegfried Sassoon, 10 poems
Rudyard Kipling, 8 poems
Edgell Rickword, 2 poems
E.E. Cummings, 1 poem
Richard Aldington, 4 poems
Ford Madox Ford, 2 poems
F.S. Flint, 1 poem
Alice Meynell, 1 poem
May Wedderburn Cannan, 1 poem
Charlotte Mew, 1 poem
Margaret Postgate Cole, 2 poems
Mina Loy, 1 poem
T.E. Hulme, 1 poem
Herbert Read, 6 poems
David Jones, 1 poem
Harold Munro, 2 poems
John Peale Bishop, 1 poem
Frederic Manning, 1 poem
Wilfred Owen, 18 poems
D.H. Lawrence, 1 poem
Isaac Rosenberg, 17 poems
Archibald MacLeish, 1 poem
Carl Sandburg, 1 poem
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1 poem
Georg Hyem (trans. Patrick Bridgwater; Christopher Middleton), 2 poems
Georg Trakl (trans. David McDuff, John Silkin; David McDuff, Jon Silkin, R.S. Furness; Michael Hamburger; Michael Hamburger; Michael Hamburger; Michael Hamburger), 6 poems
Alfred Lichtenstein (trans. Patrick Bridgwater), 1 poem
Ernst Stadler (trans. David McDuff), 1 poem
Wilhelm Klemm (trans. Patrick Bridgwater; David McDuff), 2 poems
August Stramm (trans. Patrick Bridgwater; Michael Hamburger), 2 poems
Albert Ehrenstein (trans. Christopher Middleton), 1 poem
Anton Schnack (trans. Christopher Middleton), 1 poem
Yvan Goll (trans. Patrick Bridgwater; Patrick Bridgwater), 2 poems
Guillaume Apollinaire (trans. Christopher Middleton; Anne Hyde Greet), 2 poems
Charles Vildrac (trans. Christopher Middleton), 1 poem
Benjamin Perét (trans. David Gascoyne), 1 poem
René Arcos (trans. Christopher Middleton), 1 poem
Giuseppe Ungaretti (trans. Charles Tomlinson; Jonathan Griffin; Jonathan Griffin; David McDuff, Jon Silkin; Jon Silkin; David McDuff, Jon Silkin; David McDuff, Jon Silkin; Jon Silkin), 8 poems
Eugenio Montale (trans. Gavin Ewart), 1 poem
Aleksandr Blok (trans. David McDuff, Jon Silkin), 1 poem
Anna Akhmatova (trans. Stanley Kunitz, Max Hayward), 1 poem
Osip Mandelstam (trans. David McDuff), 1 poem
Uri Zvi Greenberg (trans. Jon Silkin, Ezra Spicehandler), 1 poem
Marina Tsvetaeva (trans. David McDuff, Jon Silkin), 1 poem
Bonus:
Wang Chien (trans. Arthur Waley), 1 poem (ca. 830 CE)
woolfardis's review against another edition
3.0
My first read of this book of poetry was purely academically driven and that, as I've discovered in retrospect, has left me feeling nothing but a short wind blowing through a barren wasteland for poetry. Since leaving all academia behind, except via my own volition, I have found a delight in poetry I never knew existed.
Previously I was confused at the layout of this book and I retain that confusion now. Although the poetry is put in to categories, they don't seem to feel as if they should exist. It runs in order of how the War panned out, yes, but that is as far as it allows. There is no contents page to let you know even where those of this order begins and ends and the introduction is tiresome.
The poetry itself, of course, is accessible and rather transcends the giving of stars. It acts as history as much as long prose does, though there are those poems that I did not feel with my heart as much as others. Some that were almost terribly written-only because the author was not a great poet. The poetry by women is probably one of the most important parts of this book and I think they should have been collated altogether, as opposed to how it is, chronologically.
What else can you say about poetry that describes human atrocity?
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Previously I was confused at the layout of this book and I retain that confusion now. Although the poetry is put in to categories, they don't seem to feel as if they should exist. It runs in order of how the War panned out, yes, but that is as far as it allows. There is no contents page to let you know even where those of this order begins and ends and the introduction is tiresome.
The poetry itself, of course, is accessible and rather transcends the giving of stars. It acts as history as much as long prose does, though there are those poems that I did not feel with my heart as much as others. Some that were almost terribly written-only because the author was not a great poet. The poetry by women is probably one of the most important parts of this book and I think they should have been collated altogether, as opposed to how it is, chronologically.
What else can you say about poetry that describes human atrocity?
Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest | Shop | Etsy