For your certitude, here is the list of poems from the Penguin collection for the three authors assigned.
ROBERT GRAVES
To Robert Nichols
Recalling War
SIEGRIED SASSOON
A Working Party
'The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
'The Death-Bed
Prelude: The Troops
Counter-Attack
Base Details
Lamentations
Does it Matter?
Glory of Women
Repression of War Experience
WILFRED OWEN
Exposure
The Dead-Beat
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Disabled
Miners
Apologia Pro Poemate Meo
The ShowInsensibility
A Terre
From 'Wild with All Regrets'
The Send-Off
Mental Cases
Futility
Strange Meeting
The Sentry
Smile, Smile, Smile
Spring Offensive
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A class blog for students of English 342 - British Literature to 1945 - at Simon Fraser University.
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1 comment:
As my computer was on the blitz for some time, this is the soonest I've been able to post the aforementioned Gwendolyn Brooks poems.
These aren't historically specific (though the date of production is circa WW2), but I believe they're pertinent to many issues we touched on in class.
Source: Selected Poems, Harper&Row
mentors
For I am rightful fellow of their band.
My best allegiances are to the dead.
I swear to keep the dead upon my mind,
Disdain for all time to be overglad.
Among spring flowers, under summer trees,
By chilling autumn waters, in the frosts
Of supercilious winter--all my days
I'll have as mentors those reproving ghosts.
And at that cry, at that remotest whisper,
I'll stop my casual business. Leave the banquet.
Or leave the ball--reluctant to unclasp her
Who may be fragrant as the flower she wears,
Make gallant bows and dim excuses, then quit
Light for the midnight that is mine and theirs.
the sonnet-ballad
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war.
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate--and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
(the next one I believe is pertinent to the Graves poem we recently read, regarding the duty {or lack thereof} of art in war)
4
First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string
With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note
With hurting love; the music that they wrote
Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing
Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing
For the dear instrument to bear. Devote
The bow to silks and honey. Be remote
A while from malice and from murdering.
But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate
In front of you and harmony behind.
Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.
Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late
For having first to civilize a space
Wherein to play your violin with grace.
-excerpt from the children of the poor
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