[Tom]

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[This message has been edited by Tom (edited January 30, 2005).]

[Caleb Murdock]

Tom, thank you so much for giving that link. I'll read Seeger's work and put some of it on my site. I knew of Seeger, but was only familiar with a few poems.

[Howard]

Here's a link to a more extensive collection, including some of Seeger's translations of Dante and Ariosto:
http://www.geocities.com/athens/delphi/7086/seegidx.htm


Howard

[A. E. Stallings]

Thanks, Tom, for posting these. Yes, one's heart always sinks to see a poet whose death date is, say, 1916. Early Wilfred Owen is not entirely different in spirit from these, so one does always wonder what might have happened had the poet lived to be exposed to more "new" poetry. Or to fully incorporate the horror of the war. Rupert Brooke is certainly one such case. He tends to be dismissed, being known only for "The Soldier" these days ("If I should die, think only this of me"), which is considered naively patriotic. And yet, I have to confess I never fully had that impression of "The Soldier." It seems to me more innocent even than that--it is not, after all, the nation of England/Union Jack, but the green & pleasant English countryside he feels a part of. Sentimental? Perhaps. Patriotic/Jingoistic? I'm not as convinced.

[Tom]

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[This message has been edited by Tom (edited January 30, 2005).]

[A. E. Stallings]

Tom,

I hope you don't mind my hi-jacking your thread a bit, to post a poem by another American who was in WWI (but survived), not as a soldier, but in an ambulance corps. A number of sonnets of his are available on the web, at Sonnet Central and elsewhere, and are not entirely unlike Seeger's sonnets (thees/thous, etc.). But this one poem really struck me as being quite fine, and each time I look at it I find new felicities. It is the only poem of his in my Library of America "American Poetry" series.

Actually, I posted it once before on the tail-end of a thread, and I know a couple of people saw it already (Caleb and some others), but I think it mostly escaped notice. So bear with me, folks.

Dead Man's Corner

by Rober Hillyer (1895-1961)

Here is the crossroads where the slain
Were piled so deep we could not pass.
Now dreams alone renew the stain
Of blood long soaked into the grass.

If ambulance to save the maimed
Or gunwagon to maim the sound,
Both must proceed, while rightly named
The Mort Homme darkens all the ground.

As long ago wheels took the groove
In necessary roads again,
Crunching the bones that could not move
To move the limbs of living men;

With cracked and beaten lips that taste
Commands like acid but obeyed,
We still with leaden nightmare haste
Convey our shadows through the shade.

War is a most forgotten fear
But peace will not be out of mind.
We drive our ambulances here
God help us! and the road is blind

[Tom]

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[This message has been edited by Tom (edited January 30, 2005).]