[Jennifer Reeser]

Sublime, classical blank verse this week, by Wilfred Owen.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/bo...?hmsr=joyk.com

A soldier’s vision of the hell of war resonates beyond its maker’s brief life

"Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery...

'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now …'”

[John Isbell]

What wonderful off-rhyming Owen produced in that poem! Better than Brodsky, to my mind.

Cheers,
John

[W T Clark]

Personally I think Wilfred Owen is one of the weaker war poets. He isn't very good at compression (strange meeting, for instance, is overly long): and his idea that poetry can take care of itself as long as we attend to the pity, is questionable and even insulting. Pity is a dangerous, dehumanising emotion (and I've had my fair share of it from strangers); and poetry requires craft, technique, that is where the memorial and protest lies, not in the pity. Let's remember Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, and David Jones as well, each a genius, each, I believe, individually outclassed Owen. I don't think the First World War was Owen's war; really, it was the war of the unknown soldier.

[David Callin]

Without disparaging Gurney, Rosenberg and Jones - I've read some of the first two, and very little (not enough) of the third - if you're saying that Owen lacked craft and technique, Cameron, I heartily disagree. In a friendly manner.

I think I agree with you about "Strange Meeting". But what about "Futility"?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-56d23aa2d4b57

[W T Clark]

David, (friendly, obviously)
I'm not saying he lacked all technique, nor that he didn't write great poetry. He was very talented; and futility is one of his best and one of the best war poems. More that, firstly, his entire body of work as a whole I think is not as great as some like to say, secondly, that I think Gurney and Rosenberg and Jones had as much technical ability as Owen (Jones, in fact, did much more interesting things with the prose poem than the others did, and had a more imaginative visual reconceptualisation of the world), and, thirdly, that his "the poetry is in the pity" is hugely mistaken.
Listening to Owen at his worst moments is listening to a very gifted orator rant at you. Gurney and Rosenberg can often produce the same emotions sheerly through their images.

Originally Posted by David Callin

Without disparaging Gurney, Rosenberg and Jones - I've read some of the first two, and very little (not enough) of the third - if you're saying that Owen lacked craft and technique, Cameron, I heartily disagree. In a friendly manner.

I think I agree with you about "Strange Meeting". But what about "Futility"?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-56d23aa2d4b57

[W T Clark]

Also, if I'm not mistaken Jennifer, the poem is only in blank verse if you don't count Owen's own invention of pararhyme, or slant rhyme.

[John Isbell]

Cameron - which is what I think he does here better than Brodsky ever does. And if you're talking war poets, there's also this guy: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53744/adlestrop

Cheers,
John

[Jennifer Reeser]

Originally Posted by W T Clark

Also, if I'm not mistaken Jennifer, the poem is only in blank verse if you don't count Owen's own invention of pararhyme, or slant rhyme.

Indeed -- along with the number of angels dancing upon the head of his pen.

[Jennifer Reeser]

If in your world, "eyes" rhymes with "bless" and "hair" rhymes with "hour," who am I to judge?

You do you, Cameron.


J

[W T Clark]

I have not read enough Joseph Brodsky (is that who you mean?) to comment. Do you mean he is using sheer imagery to create emotion that in its technique is better than anything Brodsky attempted, or he is writing a very powerful oratorial rant that is better than anything Brodsky wrote?
I don't think Strange Meeting is one of his greatest poems.

Originally Posted by John Isbell

Cameron - which is what I think he does here better than Brodsky ever does. And if you're talking war poets, there's also this guy: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53744/adlestrop

Cheers,
John