Bright Young Things discussion

BYT 2014 Reading Challenge: World War 1 Centenary


2014 will mark 100 years since the start of the First World War. Here at BYT we plan to mark the war and its consequences by reading 12 books that should give anyone who reads them a better understanding of the First World War.

The First World War was a turning point in world history. It claimed the lives of over 16 million people across the globe and had a huge impact on those who experienced it. The war and its consequences shaped much of the twentieth century, and the impact of it can still be felt today.

The BYT 2014 Reading Challenge will be our way of helping to remember those who lived, fought and served during the years 1914-18.

There's a thread for each of the 12 books.

Welcome to the thread for...



The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry
(Category: Poetry (English language))

You can read the books in any order. Whilst you're reading them, or after you've finished, come and share your thoughts and feelings, ask questions, and generally get involved. The more we all participate, the richer and more fulfilling the discussions will be for us all. Here's to a stimulating, informative, and enjoyable BYT 2014 Reading Challenge.

I am going to start with this book The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry and, at the same time, also read Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. I don't normally like reading two books at once, but I think that I can just dip in and out of this volume of poetry over a period of a few weeks. It's great to be underway with the challenge.

Some very interesting information in the introduction that I did not know. It's all quite obvious in retrospect but it was still a series of lightbulb moments for me so I'll mention them.

The reason why there were hundreds of thousands of poems written and published during First World War poetry was because poetry was, for most of Edwardian society, a part of everyday life. I find it hard to imagine an era when poetry was so much a part of the day-to-day existence. The media was also almost wholly print-based (cinema was still very much in its infancy). Victorian and Edwardian educational reforms resulted in increased literacy and so the army which Britain sent out was the most widely and deeply educated in her history.

I've already read over 50 pages and I must say, so far, with a few exceptions it's all washing over me. We are in the early days of the war so I'm guessing the poetry gets more moving and tragic as the soldiers realise it won't all "be over by Christmas".

I suspect also that, unlike my forebears, I just have never leant the skill of appreciating poetry.

Here's a few sections that leapt out at me...

*

For all we have and are,
for all our children's fate,
stand up and take the war,
the Hun is at the gate! 1914

*

To Germany. The blind fight the blind."
To what God shall we chant Our songs Of battle?

*

Fat civilians wishing they 'Could go out and fight the Hun.'
Can't you see them thanking God That they're over forty-one?

*

Now that we are weary,
Now that we are fear,
Now that we are lonely - though never alone.

*

I was expecting poetry with a sense of adventure and heroism at the outset of the war.

The poetry in the first 50 or so pages seems to capture uncertainty, fear and suspicion - with a bit of humour - I love the fat civilians line above.

Whilst I am not noticing any one poem being more resonant or powerful than another, what I am experiencing, as I read through a succession of these poems, is a grim, kaleidoscopic mix of lice, blood, death, patriotic songs, mad, futility, despair, absurdity, sickness, fear etc.

I am overlaying my own mental images, which are triggered by certain words or phrases, and this is proving to be powerful and moving.

I have no idea if this is how poetry is supposed to "work" but I was not expecting this response and so thought I'd mention it.

I look forward to hearing from other BYT readers about their own responses to reading these poems.

I'd just read about Loos in Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves.


I then came across this Soldiers' song in The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

'I wore a tunic'

I wore a tunic
A dirty khaki-tunic
And you wore civilian clothes
We fought and bled at Loos
While you were on the booze,
The booze that no one here knows.
Oh, you were with the wenches
While we were in the trenches
Facing the German foe.
Oh, you were a-slacking
While we were attacking
Down the Menin Road

I prefer the simpler and more direct poems. If they rhyme then all the better.

Funnily enough, during the horror of Loos, and as described by Robert Graves, one of the things that helped him through it was brandy. He also mentioned that all the soldiers had a ration of spirits just before a battle to help give them courage - so the line about the booze is not strictly true. Although there might have been different arrangements across different regiments.

Got my book today!

Haven't yet had a chance to dip into it.

^ Great news. It's a bit lonely reading it on my own. I'm looking forward to hearing what others make of it. Poetry was such a huge part of the trench experience (though it's not all poetry from the trenches).

I love the way the poems link into other books. Here's Vera Brittain...

Hospital Sanctuary

When you have lost your all in a world's upheaval,
Suffered and prayed, and found your prayers in vain,
When love is dead, and hope has no renewal -
These need you still; come back to them again.

When the sad days bring you loss of all ambition,
And pride is gone that gave you strength to bear,
When dreams are shattered, and broken is all decision -
Turn you to these, dependent on your care.

They too have fathomed the depths of human anguish,
Seen all that counted flung like chaff away;
The dim abodes of pain wherein they languish
Offer that peace for which at last you pray.

Absolutely heartbreaking.

This poem, that formed the basis of The Dug Out does not appear in this collection, but I read about it in Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves and so sought it out. Robert Graves describes it as the most heartbreaking poem of the war. Graves first read it in a letter from his friend Siegfried Sassoon who had been shot in the head on the same day that his mother in law died from Spanish flu.


24 July 1918

American Red Cross Hospital, No. 22
98-99 Lancaster Gate, W.2

Dear Roberto,

I’d timed my death in action to the minute
(The Nation with my deathly verses in it).
The day told off—13—(the month July)—
The picture planned—O Threshold of the dark!
And then, the quivering songster failed to die
Because the bloody Bullet missed its mark.

Here I am; they would send me back—
Kind M.O. at Base; Sassoon’s morale grown slack;
Swallowed all his proud high thoughts and acquiesced.
O Gate of Lancaster, O Blightyland the Blessed.

No visitors allowed
Since Friends arrived in crowd—
Jabber—Gesture—Jabber—Gesture—Nerves went phut and
failed
After the first afternoon when MarshMoonStreetMeiklejohn
ArdoursandenduranSitwellitis prevailed,
Caused complications and set my brain a-hop;
Sleeplessexasperuicide, O Jesu make it stop!

But yesterday afternoon my reasoning Rivers ran solemnly in,
With peace in the pools of his spectacled eyes and a wisely
omnipotent grin;
And I fished in that steady grey stream and decided that I
After all am no longer the Worm that refuses to die.
But a gallant and glorious lyrical soldjer;
Bolder and bolder; as he gets older;
Shouting “Back to the Front
For a scrimmaging Stunt.”
(I wish the weather wouldn’t keep on getting colder.)

Yes, you can touch my Banker when you need him.
Why keep a Jewish friend unless you bleed him?

Oh yes, he’s doing very well and sleeps from Two till Four.
And there was Jolly Otterleen a knocking at the door,
But Matron says she mustn’t, not however loud she knocks
(Though she’s bags of golden Daisies and some Raspberries in a
box),
Be admitted to the wonderful and wild and wobbly-witted
sarcastic soldier-poet with a plaster on his crown,
Who pretends he doesn’t know it (he’s the Topic of the Town).

My God, my God, I’m so excited; I’ve just had a letter
From Stable who’s commanding the Twenty-Fifth Battalion.
And my company, he tells me, doing better and better,
Pinched six Saxons after lunch,
And bagged machine-guns by the bunch.

But I—wasn’t there—
O blast it isn’t fair,
Because they’ll all be wondering why
Dotty Captain wasn’t standing by
When they came marching home.

But I don’t care; I made them love me
Although they didn’t want to do it, and I’ve sent them a
glorious Gramophone and God send you back to me
Over the green eviscerating sea—
And I’m ill and afraid to go back to them because those
five-nines are so damned awful.
When you think of them all bursting and you’re lying on your
bed,
With the books you loved and longed for on the table; and your
head
All crammed with village verses about Daffodils and Geese—
… O Jesu make it cease … .

O Rivers please take me. And make me
Go back to the war till it break me.
Some day my brain will go BANG,
And they’ll say what lovely faces were
The soldier-lads he sang

Does this break your heart? What do I care?

Sassons

Exultation and triumph was what Rudyard Kipling had in mind as he actively encouraged his young son to go to war.

Kipling's son John died in the First World War, at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at age 18.

After his son's death, Kipling wrote (and included in this book on p, 245)...

If any question why we died / Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Nigeyb wrote: "Exultation and triumph was what Rudyard Kipling had in mind as he actively encouraged his young son to go to war.

Kipling's son John died in the First World War, at the Battle of Lo..."

Kipling touches on this in a haunting story, Baa Baa, Black Sheep and The Gardener. It is the second story in this selection of two that touches on the loss. He makes it a woman who loses a nephew. The first story has its basis in his own youth. It is really a heartbreaking book once you realize what the basis for the two stories is/are.

I've finished this now. Here's my review. I repeat a lot of what Ive already said.


Some very interesting information in the introduction that I hadn't realised. It's all quite obvious in retrospect but it was still a series of lightbulb moments for me so I'll make reference to it. The reason why there were hundreds of thousands of poems written and published during World War One was because:

- poetry was for most of Edwardian society, a part of everyday life;
- The media was also almost wholly print-based (cinema was still very much in its infancy);
- Victorian and Edwardian educational reforms resulted in increased literacy;
- the army which Britain sent to fight was the most widely and deeply educated in her history.

I find it very hard to imagine an era when poetry was so much a part of day-to-day life. Although I have never learnt the skill of appreciating poetry, as I read through a succession of these poems, and triggered by certain words or phrases, I started to get images of a grim, kaleidoscopic mix of lice, blood, death, patriotic songs, mad, futility, despair, absurdity, sickness, fear etc. It proved to be a powerful and moving experience.

As I was reading this book, I was also reading Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves. Sometimes the two books worked in tandem. Robert Graves describes the horror of The Battle of Loos and there - in this volume - are poems inspired by Loos.

One very small but moving moment was reading a poem written by Rudyard Kipling. When he actively encouraged his young son John to go to war he was expecting triumph and heroism. John died in the First World War, at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at age 18. After his son's death, Kipling wrote...

If any question why we died / Tell them, because our fathers lied.

An important document of how World War One was experienced by a wide range of articulate and thoughtful people that brings the experience vividly to life.

4/5

I really look forward to reading what others make of these poems. It was an inspired idea to include poetry into our WW1 challenge.

I agree--it was an inspired idea to include poetry! I have a feeling that this might be the WWI book that will impact me the most of the 12 we've chosen. The poems (I'll come back later to talk about some specifics)seem to me to be the writers' attempts to make sense of their experiences, in a very condensed and meaningful way. They're really "putting me in the picture" as Waugh would say.

My library had none of the nominated poetry books and I wanted to vote for the one that was the most readily available. I'm glad this one won. The introduction was very interesting. In addition to writing about the role of poetry in Britain at the time (as previously mentioned by Nigeyb), the editor also distinguished between the poet-soldiers and the soldier-poets.

Along with the informative intro, there's also a glossary of places and terms that come up in the poems. There are notes on individual poems that help the general reader understand allusions and vocabulary that might be unfamiliar. There are brief bios of all the poets, with publication details for the poems.
I'm finding all these very helpful.

I also appreciate how the poems are organized thematically. Most poetry anthologies I've seen organize by poet and date rather than by subject. By reading all the poems on a certain theme, I'm getting a clearer picture of the experience of war. Sanitized of course.

I was surprised and unthrilled when we included poetry in this challenge, but I'm now enthusiastic. I hope many of you will read this book.

Barbara wrote: "I was surprised and unthrilled when we included poetry in this challenge, but I'm now enthusiastic. I hope many of you will read this book. "

Seconded. Thanks Barbara.

Actually I hope most of you will read all 12 books - I think we've come up with a wonderful cross-section of books to explore and understand the conflict.

Hi new here. This collection is very intriguing.

Hi Kyle - welcome. There's a whole World War One challenge if that appeals. 12 books to read throughout 2014 to mark the centenary of the War.

I decided to buy the poetry book, not borrow it from the library, so that I can dip into it throughout the year, as some of the rest of you are doing. It arrived this morning.
I have read these poems before and yet I can only remember a few of them (so far).

I decided to skip the introduction this time. In so many books I have gotten so bogged down by the introduction. I'll come back to the introduction later.

Better to just dip into the poems. I've been kind of flipping around.

I haven't really started reading this yet, but just dipped in to look at some Robert Graves poems alongside Goodbye to All That - I noticed that his poem 'A Dead Boche' describes a body seen in a wood which also features in a prose account in his memoirs. A powerful image.

Judy wrote: "I haven't really started reading this yet, but just dipped in to look at some Robert Graves poems alongside Goodbye to All That - I noticed that his poem 'A Dead Boche' describes a body seen in a wood which also features in a prose account in his memoirs. A powerful image. "

It's an amazing poem isn't it?

A Dead Boche

To you who’d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:

Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

The first verse making it clear that, despite what you might have heard war is hell, and the second hammering home the point with devastating power and a graphic description of the reality of war.

I am really glad that I decided to start with this one as well as The Guns of August. I thought I would dip into this one while I did TGoA and group reads, but It has been the opposite! This poetry book may be the one that is the most fruitful of the WWI books that I read this year. I say that because it follows the war from recruitment to War's end, and it not only discusses the things that happen, such as recruitment and conscription, but it also gives you the feelings of a wide variety of participants and very different perspectives. For a few minutes I'm a lover of a soldier going off to war and the next few minutes I'm God listening to prayers on both sides of the war asking for my help. What better way than these perspectives to help me truly think about the war?

Sometimes I skip introductions, but I enjoyed reading about the history of poetry and some of its movements and poets. I really appreciated the breakdown of the five major settings "each exploring a particular area of wartime experience." xxxvii
(I recommend reading in order because I feel as if I am viewing, even living through, some of these experiences.)

Here are just a few lines that struck me from Section I:(words in parentheses are my thoughts)

"What dreadful menace hangs above our town?
Let all the great cities pray; for they have sinned." Faber 4
(War is a punishment for some sin)

"Oh! we who have known shame, we have found
release there,
Where there's no ill,no grief, but sleep has mending,"Brooke 11
(War will absolve them from past sin, shame)

"God heard the embattled nations sing and shout
'Gott strafe England!' And God save the King!'
God this, and God that, and God the other thing-
'Good God' said God 'I've got my work cut out."Squire 19
(Is there always an easy right versus wrong, aren't there good people on both sides?)


Next are poems giving the feelings of a soldier, an objector, a sweetheart. One of my favorites, be sure to read is about how the youth always feel invincible and it has always been this way with war, going back to David in the Bible-great poem, "Youth in Arms I" Harold Monro 24

On to Section II, I am slowly soaking them in...

Candace wrote: "This poetry book may be the one that is the most fruitful of the WWI books that I read this year. "


That's wonderful Candace - keep us posted.

I've now started reading this collection. The introduction is interesting, looking at how the 'canon' of war poets was built up over the years, but I did get the feeling that editor George Walter is rather keen to dismiss previous collections which concentrated on the better-known poets. That's a shame to my mind, since I love Up the Line to Death: The War Poets, 1914-1918 in particular.

It's interesting to see the less well-known poems featured in this collection, and so far I've been absolutely blown away by a few poems I hadn't seen before, like John Masefield's 'August 1914', about the farm labourers dragging themselves away from their fields to go and fight, both in the war which was just starting and in others fought over previous centuries. I've mainly come across sea poems by John Masefield - must read more of his work. He's best known for Box Of Delights, but I see he published quite a few novels as well.

Getting back to this book, I do find the way the poems are arranged rather confusing, and would really like the publication dates on the page, rather than in the notes at the back.
I also feel Wilfred Owen might be a bit under-represented here - his poems stand out so much compared to many of the others in this collection.

For anyone else who liked John Masefield's poem in this collection, I've just done a quick bit of Googling to see if I could find any other war poems by him - found this one, which was a tribute to Rupert Brooke:

The Island of Skyros

By John Masefield


HERE, where we stood together, we three men,
Before the war had swept us to the East
Three thousand miles away, I stand again
And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast.
We trod the same path, to the selfsame place,
Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves,
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase,
And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves.
So, since we communed here, our bones have been
Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be,
Earth and the worldwide battle lie between,
Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea.
Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood
As I stand now, with pulses beating blood.

I saw her like a shadow on the sky
In the last light, a blur upon the sea,
Then the gale’s darkness put the shadow by,
But from one grave that island talked to me;
And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm,
I saw its blackness and a blinking light,
And thought, “So death obscures your gentle form,
So memory strives to make the darkness bright;
And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies,
Part of the island till the planet ends,
My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise,
Part of this crag this bitter surge offends,
While I, who pass, a little obscure thing,
War with this force, and breathe, and am its king."

John Masefield's "August 1914" is one of my favourites from that first section too.

In the fine-arts department, just wanted to mention that Horton Foote has Valentine's Day and two related short plays (later made into films) that are set in the WWI era. Including mention of the flu epidemic that was so traumatic that it fell down the memory hole for decades afterwards.

Shelley
http://dustbowlstory.wordpress.com

Shelley wrote: "In the fine-arts department, just wanted to mention that Horton Foote has Valentine's Day and two related short plays (later made into films) that are set in the WWI era. Including mention of the f..."

That was an excellent trilogy. I believe they used to show it on PBS but I think I have also seen one or another of them on cable.

I picked up an old 2nd edition of this book yesterday from 1981, I think the poems might be organised differently as mine are arranged by author, rather than theme, but there is a long introduction which I'll get started on today. I've read a couple of WW1 themed books already this year, but this is the first poll winner for our theme that I'll be starting.

Thanks everyone for the interesting discussions above, it's really interesting to read what everyone thinks so far. I am NOT generally a fan of poetry as almost everything I try to read I either hate or don't understand (other than Sylvia Plath who I love) but I'm really looking forward to reading the poems in this, even though I think they will be heartbreaking.

Great to see so much enthusiasm for the WW1 poetry, particularly as it was such an important way of conveying feelings, emotions and information during an era when poetry was a part of people's day-to-day existence.

Just a quick comment to say how worthwhile I found reading the introduction. It was insightful, plus I liked how it explained the choice of order for the poems in the book. I've only read the first few, but I'll be reading them slowly alongside other things.

I've just watched BBC1's 'Countryfile', which included a feature on Siegfried Sassoon's home in Wiltshire. There were interviews with a close friend, Dennis, who had recorded him reading some of his poems on a reel-to-reel tape recorder - the programme included part of Sassoon's reading of 'The Dug-out', which has always been one of my favourites. Hopefully this programme will turn up on iPlayer and maybe Youtube too so that more people can see it.

The same programme also had a feature on Vita Sackville-West, looking at Knole and Sissinghurst, so really an ideal BYT episode! I had no idea in advance that any of this was going to be on and indeed only saw the programme by chance.

^ Wonderful. Thanks Judy.


It looks like that episode will be on iPlayer very soon...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xlj1r

I shall definitely give it a watch. Thanks again.

Glad to hear it will be on iPlayer, Nigeyb, and thanks for finding the link. I hope you enjoy the programme.

Sassoon's war poems have been some of my favourites, so that looks like an interesting programme.

I've just finished reading this collection and I really liked it, some poems I preferred more than others, but they were all very heartfelt.

I love the raw emotion in poetry. The trouble is that the war was so long ago that it's difficult to understand it in anything more than an academic sense but poetry seems to have a knack of transporting you directly to the place and time...it's immediate and catches you by the throat.

Ally wrote: "I love the raw emotion in poetry. The trouble is that the war was so long ago that it's difficult to understand it in anything more than an academic sense but poetry seems to have a knack of transp..."

Agreed, it makes it more personal and affecting, more so than reading about how many millions died.

For anyone in the UK who is interested in the Ivor Gurney poems in this collection, there is a documentary about him on BBC4 at 9pm tonight (March 30). Oddly, it is called 'The Poet Who Loved The War', but this article from the Western Morning News explains why, saying that being in the war was probably in some ways the happiest period for him because of the comradeship.

Still with Ivor Gurney... have you ever noticed how, if you are reading one book, others always seem to connect to it?!

I'm just reading Swarming by Edward MacKay, a pamphlet by a young modern poet. I've now found that one of the poems in it is a tribute to Ivor Gurney, who was in a mental hospital after his war, and fellow-poet Edward Thomas, his friend who was killed.

If anyone is interested in reading this poem,'Stone House Asylum 1932', which I found very moving, it is online in the summer 2011 edition of the magazine Night and Day - I tried to post a direct link to this but it didn't work, because it is a download! To download a free PDF of the issue, you need to click on
www.vintage-books.co.uk/Download.ashx... - then, when it has downloaded, scroll down to page 13. Hopefully this link will now work!!

^ Did anyone watch the programme? Should we be seeking it out?

It's not on until tonight, Nigeyb. It sounds interesting, I thought.

Ah! Thanks Judy. I shall record it and report back.

Another poetry related broadcast... Derek Jarman's film 'War Requiem', combining Benjamin Britten's music with Wilfred Owen's poetry, is showing on TV tonight (March 30) in the UK - 11.45pm on BBC2. Apparently it has no spoken dialogue, but the cast includes Laurence Olivier, Nathaniel Parker, Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean. I will be recording both this and the Gurney doc.

^ That sounds quite something. Thanks again Judy. My WW1 backlog is building up on my hard disc recorder.

Yes, it's hard to keep pace with all the interesting programmes and films on the theme that are being shown. I'm really only managing to watch a few.

I'm getting towards the end of this collection now and am increasingly impressed. As well as the famous names, there are many other impressive poets who aren't so well known. The way it is arranged in themed sections has grown on me.

It's also good to see women poets featured alongside the men, and some of their poems are very powerful - Charlotte Mew particularly impresses me, and this reminded me that I have a collection of her poetry and prose waiting on the shelf. Peeping into it, a lot of her poems look to be about the First World War.

Would everyone who has read this recommend it as worth the purchase? Poetry takes me awhile to read since I prefer only reading a few poems at a time to absorb it, and I don't think I'd finish it in the time frame borrowing it allows.

Amanda--I don't know if you'll consider it worth the purchase, but for me, this was one of the best books I've read in ages. It made the war experience very real for me. I'd planned to just dip into it here and there, reading a few poems at a time. Once I started though, I just kept going. Now I'm picking it up and re-reading a few every so often. I rated it a 5, which is rare for me. I hope you'll like it!

I'm still reading it. I don't rip through poetry books. They should be savored and thought about. They're also the books I hold on to. And the books I never get in Kindle format.

To me it is worth the price.

Amanda: You could borrow it first, read some of the poems in the time allowed and then only buy it if it inspires you. I also prefer to read one or two poems at a time and did buy it, but I had read from it before then and decided it was worth it.

^ Amanada, I'd echo the sagely advice above, just adding one thing, if you enjoy poetry and you are interested in the era/subject then this is one of the best poetry collections around. If you're less interested in poetry then just borrow it and savour a sample.

Thank you for the advice everyone!

Val, I will probably take your suggestion and get it from the library to decide. But it seems like everyone has unanimously loved it, so I have a feeling I'll end up purchasing it.

Thanks again!