War Poetry

 Bridge Course: War Poetry

In this blog, I am going to discuss the difference and similarities between war poetry and the poets (selected poems).

What is war poetry:

War poetry is a literary genre that originated during wartime when hundreds of soldiers, and also civilians caught up in conflict, started to write poetry as a way of striving to express extreme emotion at the very edge of experience.

My own understanding of war poetry:

Technically speaking war genre in poetry includes many sub-genres like nationalistic poems, pro-war, anti-war, etc. generally the poems have been mostly written by war veterans and soldiers who fought in the war. But this doesn't mean that only veterans have written about war. War poetry is not necessarily encouraging recruits to fight for their nation which is pro-war poetry, it is also anti-war, like Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est". I think a poet, who is writing about his own experience of fear and terror that war has spread in a true sense can be called war poetry.

Difference between poets:

Poets	Differences
Wilfred Owen	His Personal Experiences, pity, fear and terror of war. considered as  Anti-war.
Rupert Brooke	Patriotism and Nationalism, Pro-war.
Siegfried Sassoon	Some poems reflect his disillusionment with the war, the horror and brutality of the trench, using the epistolary technique.
Ivory Gurney	War is a mess, God won't help anybody, if you have to survive then you must other humans, use of monologue narrative style, using some colloquial language
Wilfred Wilson Gibson	Enemies are not the only ones that kill you in the war, his plain style came to be recognized as a principal ‘Georgian’ characteristic

Compare any two poems concerning the subject, style of writing and patriotism.

Dulce et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen

Subject:

The subject of this poem is showing the reality of war. The tone of this poem is critical, the poet's voice is bitter. Owen dwells on explicit details of horror and misery to maximise the impact he wishes to have on those who tell the ‘old Lie’. How he addresses as ‘My friend’ those with whom he so strongly disagrees is ironic.

Style:

The poem consists of four stanzas of various lengths. The first 14 lines can be read as a [3sonnet3) although they do not end with a rhyming couplet, and instead, the ABAB rhyme scheme carries on into the separate pair of lines which constitute the third stanza.

Patriotism:

The poem is not at all a patriotic poem rather it is an anti-war poem. It is written in an ironic and bitter tone which is against war. This poem will surely terrify anyone who is showing heroism and courage.

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

Subject:

“The Soldier” was written by Rupert Brooke in 1914 in a traditional sonnet form. The subject of this poem is love and death which is the two most powerful things that recall the feeling of readers. Death, as he is a soldier going into World War One, and love in the sense of loving his country. The tone is uplifting and idealistic but also self-sacrificial. There is a sense of romantic inevitability about the privilege and duty of dying for one's country

Style:

This poem is written in fourteen lines in a Petrarchan/Italian sonnet form. The poem is divided into an opening octet and then followed by a concluding sestet (the last six lines of a sonnet). In the rhyme scheme of the poem; the octet is rhymed after the Shakespearean/Elizabethan (ABAB CDCD) form, while the sestet follows the Petrarchan/Italian (EFG EFG) form.

Patriotism:

"The Soldier" is a sonnet in which the poet glorifies England during the First World War. The purpose of this poem was to encourage youngsters to fight in the war. It is a deeply patriotic and idealistic poem that expresses a soldier's love for his homeland—in this case, England, which is portrayed as a kind of nurturing paradise.