Here are some queries abut this week's readings:
Robert Bertholf provides a brief biography of Graves.
Probably the most famous WW1 poem, and the one most of you have already encountered, is by John McRae, "In Flanders Fields":
You're reading a slew of poems. This is not like them. Why not? And, for fun, one more that is also unlike those you are reading, this one Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier":In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, through poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less,
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
John McRae, author of "In Flanders Fields," ("Canada's best-known poem," says Britannica Online), died in 1918 -- dispirited by all the deaths he had experienced in France, and weakened by progressive illness: asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, meningitis. "In Flanders Fields" is dated 1915.
Rupert Brooke wrote "The Soldier" in November-December of 1914; he died in the Aegean in April of 1915 -- the result of blood poisoning from a neglected injury. Note that, in form, "The Soldier" is a regular Petrarchan (non-Shakespearian) sonnet abab cdcd efgefg.
These are representative of "popular" WW1 poems. What's "unpopular" about, oh, say, Gurney?
A good poetry site is provided by Harry Rusche's "Lost Poets of the Great War" (Emory University).
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