First World War – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

Interesting Facts about War Poets

By Ana McLaughlin

As the hundred year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approaches (1^st July 2016), here’s a look at the most interesting biographies of our greatest war poets, and some surprising facts you might not know about them.

Lawrence Binyon (1869-1943) wrote ‘For The Fallen’, with its immortal fourth verse:

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.’

A Short Analysis of Ivor Gurney’s ‘To God’

On a great poem by one of WWI’s overlooked war poets – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle

Ivor Gurney is a relatively little-known poet of the First World War. Born in Gloucester in 1890, he served in the War from 1915 until 1917; he would spend most of his final years in the City of London Mental Hospital, dying in 1937. ‘To God’ was written after Gurney’s experiences in the First World War, and during his confinement, as the ‘four walls’ suggest in the poem’s second line. Here is ‘To God’, followed by a short analysis of its language and meaning.

To God

Why have you made life so intolerable
And set me between four walls, where I am able
Not to escape meals without prayer, for that is possible
Only by annoying an attendant. And tonight a sensual
Hell has been put on me, so that all has deserted me
And I am merely crying and trembling in heart
For death, and cannot get it. And gone out is part
Of sanity. And there is dreadful hell within me.

The Best War Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

There are many great war poems out there and there have been a great number of popular war poets. Putting together a universal list of the best war poetry raises all sorts of questions. But since such a list will always be a matter of personal taste balanced with more objective matters such as ‘influence’ and ‘popularity with anthologists’, we hope you’ll forgive the presumptuous title ‘best war poems’.

Five Fascinating Facts about War Poetry

Facts about the war poets and their poetry, as well as other links between poetry and war

1. The link between poppies and war remembrance dates from the Napoleonic wars, when a writer noted that they flourished over soldiers’ graves. The association would be popularised during the First World War, especially by John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields‘ in 1915.