Abstract
This chapter attempts to argue two main points: first, that the poetry of the First World War was perceived as a homogeneous poetic kind from very early on in its history, and that publication in anthologies was both cause and consequence of this way of perceiving it; and secondly, that the characteristic lyric forms which the trench poets utilised are a necessary aspect of their meaning.
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Notes
‘War Poetry’, in Poetry and Drama, II, no. 8 (December 1914); this essay can be more conveniently found in D. Hibberd (ed.), Poetry of the Great War: A Casebook (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981) pp. 25–30).
Keith Robbins, in The First World War (1984) p. 16. The proliferation of verse in wartime in the twentieth century has long been wondered at, but never adequately explained.
From a letter of 2 August 1924, in M. Newbolt (ed.), The Later Life and Letters of Sir Henry Newbolt (London, 1924); quoted by Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) p. 26, who cites as his source Patrick Howarth, Play Up and Play the Game (1973). The relevant passage from the letter is also reprinted in J. Press, A Map of Modern English Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) p. 147, and in D. Hibberd (ed.), Poetry of the Great War: A Casebook, p. 65.
From a letter of 2 August 1924, in M. Newbolt (ed.), The Later Life and Letters of Sir Henry Newbolt (London, 1924); quoted by Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) p. 26, who cites as his source Patrick Howarth, Play Up and Play the Game (1973). The relevant passage from the letter is also reprinted in J. Press, A Map of Modern English Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) p. 147, and in D. Hibberd (ed.), Poetry of the Great War: A Casebook, p. 65.
From a letter of 2 August 1924, in M. Newbolt (ed.), The Later Life and Letters of Sir Henry Newbolt (London, 1924); quoted by Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) p. 26, who cites as his source Patrick Howarth, Play Up and Play the Game (1973). The relevant passage from the letter is also reprinted in J. Press, A Map of Modern English Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) p. 147, and in D. Hibberd (ed.), Poetry of the Great War: A Casebook, p. 65.
From a letter of 2 August 1924, in M. Newbolt (ed.), The Later Life and Letters of Sir Henry Newbolt (London, 1924); quoted by Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) p. 26, who cites as his source Patrick Howarth, Play Up and Play the Game (1973). The relevant passage from the letter is also reprinted in J. Press, A Map of Modern English Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) p. 147, and in D. Hibberd (ed.), Poetry of the Great War: A Casebook, p. 65.
Notoriously, the poets of the First World War were omitted from Roberts’s The Faber Book of Modern Verse because of their lack of formal experimentation. However, experiments were being made, if infrequently: for example, Robert Nichols’s The Assault, published in Ardours and Endurances (1917) and also included in Georgian Poetry 1916–1917 (1917), is in free verse of a crude kind, laced with obtrusive rhymes, a form devised in response to an attempt at narrative description.
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Gray, M. (1995). Lyrics of the First World War: Some Comments. In: Day, G., Docherty, B. (eds) British Poetry, 1900–50. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24000-5_4
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