[A. E. Stallings]

Wilfred Owen is one of my favorite poets (and not just favorite "War Poet"), and I consider him great with a capital G (though, as we have discussed, "greatness" ends up not being a very useful category--so I'll drop it--a favorite poet, let us say). His output is slim, of course, since he died on the front during WW1 at the age, I think, of 26. His own favorite poet was Keats, who also died at 26 (?), so there is a poignant irony there. Both poets also wrote most of their best work in a short spurt of amazing productivity. A lot is said, in both cases, of what they might have accomplished had they lived longer. More, certainly. But I do think that in both cases the amazing productivity and intensity was in part due to a presentiment that they would die young (Keats of consumption, and Owen could make a pretty good guess, knowing the odds at the front). But that's just my own theory.

He is particularly known for employing a variety of slant rime that some call "pararhyme." That is where the consonants align on both sides of a syllable, but the vowel shifts. Such as: "time/tomb" "rhyme/room" "plight/plate", etc. It has been noticed that he often goes from a higher to a lower vowel sound in this. Sometimes the result is of a literal transformation-- green becoming groan, etc. Owen was Welsh, and there is perhaps some connection (though I don't think it has ever been demonstrated that he was all that familiar with Welsh poetry) with Welsh poetry, which traditionally employs alliteration and consonantal rhymes. (I'm no expert on this, though.)

Actually, however, the poem I decided to post employs full rime. What I like about this one is how he has inverted an old trope--Ovid says, for instance, that every lover is a soldier. And the idea of love being compared to war is an ancient one. But this does the opposite, and (shockingly) describes soldiers and war in the traditional cloying language and cliched tropes of love. I also like the contrast of dictions here--between the high poetic (including inversions), to the clinical, crude and latinate. The long lines--2,5 of each stanza--should be indented. (I was given excellent advice on this, but haven't quite mastered the trick yet.)

Greater Love

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,--
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,--
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may thouch them not.

[nyctom]

Ah, I love this poem. I thought people might find this interesting:

These notes are from Jon Stallworthy, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, pp. 143-4
[as quoted on the website http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/
which is a very good site for WWI poets]


The poem is a response to Swinburne's poem "Before the Mirror / (Verses Written under a Picture) / Inscribed to J. A. Whistler," ll. 1-7:


White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white;
Snowdrops that plead for pardon
And pine for fright
Because the hard East blows
Over their maiden rows
Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright.
WO may also have been aware of Salomé's words to Jokanaan in Wilde's Salomé: "The roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are not so white as thy body." WO had written: "Christ is literally in no man's land. There men often hear His voice: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life-for a friend."

TITLE: John 15:13: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." See also "At a Calvary near the Ancre": "But they who love the greater love / Lay down their life; they do not hate."

Line 20. See Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Second Book, ll. 718-20:

As my blood recoiled
From that imputed ignominy, I made
My heart great with it.
Line 22. trail: Used in the military sense of "trail arms," carry a rifle with butt end near the ground and muzzle pointing forwards.

Line 24. See John 21:l5-l7: "Jesus saith unto [MaryMagdalene], Woman,why weepest thou? . . . Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father."

[A. E. Stallings]

Thanks very much, Tom. The notes are very enlightening. Shows what I know--I was not even familiar with the Swinburne poem (and only have an old New Directions Paperbook Collected).

I forgot to point out this site, the Wilfred Owen Multi-Media Archive:

http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/jtap/

It is one of the most amazing scholarly sites for any single poet on the web (though also has information on the WWI and Georgian poets generally), and cost Oxford a small fortune to set up. You can view facsimiles of all the poems in manuscript, hear Real Audio interviews with veterans, you name it. Definitely worth a visit.

[nyctom]

Alicia:
My undergrad degrees are in History and English--and I find the first WW utterly fascinating. This site you posted is amazing! I just read the first letter posted to his mom--and it is touching how young and in some ways innocent WO is in that letter. I love to see original manuscripts, even in facsimile. Must be something about the handwriting.

Well thank you so much for posting it.

nyctom

[peter richards]

My God. 'Some say God caught them before they fell'.

I've got that one too: Jon Stallworthy, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, Hogarth, London, ISBN 0-7012-1015-x

Get lumps in my throat from reading Owen. He wasn't any more Welsh than his name, although Oswestry and Birkenhead are a day's haul from Westminster.

Thanks for the thread, Alicia.

Peter

[Caleb Murdock]

Alicia,

Thank you for posting that site address. I haven't visited it yet, but I will.

There have been several major publications of Owen's work, the two most recent being in the 1960's (I think -- I am at work and don't have the book with me) and then again in 1989 (I think). The 1960's publication is, in my view, better than the 1989 publication (although the latter is more complete, with more poems). Since Owen died during the war, he left behind many drafts of his poems. The editors of the 1960's publication used better sense in deciding which version was most likely the final one. When they were presented with two versions, each of which could have been final, they chose the one that (they felt) had the better language, giving alternate text in the footnotes. However, the editors of the 1989 publication mounted a whole investigation in which they pretty much concluded that Owen's final drafts were the ones written on the most recently manufactured paper (and other similar criteria). The result is that the versions they selected were often inferior to other drafts. Maddeningly, my favorite line in all of Owen's poetry was consigned to a footnote, and they substituted a line which was nothing less than clumsy.

Incidentally, I have a selection of Owen's poetry on my site.

Caleb
www.poemtree.com




[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited October 03, 2001).]

[A. E. Stallings]

My old used-book store Collected (as I mentioned, I don't have access to a library here, so have to make do with my own inadequate collection), is edited with an intro & notes by C. Day Lewis (and includes a Memoir by Edmund Blunden). It has a pretty extensive apparatus criticus, with alternate readings, etc. And I find the early versions very fascinating.

This entire poem is given as a footnote, as being an earlier version of "S.I.W." (self-inflicted wound). I almost prefer this--particularly the ending (Or at least it seems strong enough for a separate poem. Perhaps the Stallworthy gives it as such? I should check out on the web site, which uses the Stallworthy edition):

He Died Smiling:

Patting goodbye, his father said, "My lad,
You'll always show the Hun a brave man's face.
I'd rather you were dead than in disgrace.
We're proud to see you going, Jim, we're glad."

His mother whimpered, "Jim, my boy, I frets
Until ye git a nice safe sound, I do."
His sister said: why couldn't they go too.
His brothers said they'd send him cigarettes.

For three years, once a week, they wrote the same,
Adding, "We hope you use the Y.M. Hut."
And once a day came twenty Navy Cut.
And once an hour a bullet missed its aim.

And misses teased the hunger of his brain.
His eyes grew scorched with wincing, and his hand
Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, like sand
From sandbags that have stood three years of rain.

P.S. Caleb--what's your favorite line, now a footnote?

[Caleb Murdock]

"And finished fields of autumns that are old"

... in the poem "Asleep". I'm at work again, and I can't remember what the replacement line was, but I remember it has the words "rusty old". That line, above, on close examination, has a vague meaning, but it resonates within in me in a way that I can't explain. It seems to capture the inexorable march of time, and the feeling that the world is an ancient place.

Last night, when I got home, it simply slipped my mind to pull out my Owen books and make corrections to my previous post (so I can refer to editions properly, instead of "1960's" and "1989", etc.). I'll try to remember tonight.

I did go to that site last night, and it was just delightful to see all those manuscripts. What orderly handwriting he had! It was also interesting to see poems take shape over several drafts. He had an unerring sense of what sounded right and what sounded wrong, and you could see that sense shaping the poems as he worked on them. It was also exciting, in "Dulce et Decorum Est", to see him slash out an entire section of the poem and replace it with something much more effective.

Now, this may be controversial, but I think that Owen was gay. His laments for the loss of his comrades is tinged with too much affection and subtle eroticism. I think this makes sense, as a heterosexual soldier might not have felt the loss of life around him quite so acutely, or might have been more likely to see it as a necessary sacrifice.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited October 04, 2001).]

[nyctom]

That may be a product of the times he live in Caleb. There is a wonderful essay by the social historian Carol Smith-Rosenberg, exploring this from a woman's perspective called (I believe) "The Female World of Love and Ritual." You would probably find it interesting. I read tons of gay history but I don't remember offhand any particular monograph that deals directly with the issue from a male perspective. But this affection was clearly socially acceptable then, and no one raised an undue fuss about affection between men during times of war. Much better than "Don't ask; don't tell" don't you think? And while it may be personally fun to speculate, I don't know how relevant WO's possible homosexuality is to appreciate the poems. It's not like reading John Addington Symonds, bad poet that he is (though his autobiography is utterly fascinating). Knowing that JAS was a homosexual clearly does add a texture to his love poetry that isn't there otherwise.
nyctom

[Nigel Holt]

This thread made me go off and search for one of Owen's poems that I hadn't read for nearly twenty years - and I haven't seen anthologised.

I think that this is a most moving piece of writing - one at least, I haven't ever forgotten. Thanks, Alicia.

Soldier's Dream


I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.


And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.