By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Next War’ is a relatively little-known Wilfred Owen poem: compared with his great sonnet ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, this sonnet is practically invisible to all but the most diehard fans of Wilfred Owen or war poetry. Yet this poem offers an interesting insight […]
Tag: First World War
A Short Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘The Kind Ghosts’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Kind Ghosts’ is not one of Wilfred Owen’s best-known war poems, but it deserves to be better-known. In just twelve lines, Owen (1893-1918) contrasts the sleepy attitude of Britain’s civilians with the sacrifice being made by countless British men in the theatre of […]
A Short Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘1914’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘1914’ is a poem by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). As the title suggests, it’s a poem about the outbreak of the First World War, in August 1914. Before we offer some words of analysis, here’s a reminder of the poem. 1914 War broke: and now […]
Modernism’s Other Waste Land: Hope Mirrlees’ Paris
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle discusses the remarkable modernist poem, Paris: A Poem by Hope Mirrlees ‘April is the cruellest month.’ The opening line (although it’s worth remembering that ‘April is the cruellest month’ is not the full line) of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 […]
A Short Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Mental Cases’
‘Mental Cases’ began life as a poem titled ‘The Deranged’ in late 1917, following Wilfred Owen’s famous meeting with fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon in Craiglockhart Hospital. Encouraged by Sassoon, and partly inspired by his fellow war poet’s poem ‘The Survivors’, Owen set about depicting the terrifying mental landscape of […]