War poetry

[Angry Young Man]

We started going through module 6 in lit today. We looked at a few pro-war poems and they were absolutely dreadful. Overly simplified and jestful. They seemed to portray it as like a fooball match!

Despite this, oe of them had a good phonology. The message itself was absolutely repugnant, but it employed an interesting use of assonance, rhyme and dissonance, as in the last word of a line would rhyme with one or two words in the middle of the next andthe last would sound completely different.

What I'm getting at is this: is it wrong, even recognising the transparency of the message, is it ok to like this poem? Vitai Lampada I think it was called.

The others were crap in every sense, even the meter and phonology.

[Sir Aunty Christ]

Don't worry about it, you'll get the anti-war poems soon enough.

[luxemburg89]

is it wrong, even recognising the transparency of the message, is it ok to like this poem? Vitai Lampada I think it was called.


Why not? If you like the form, why not just like it on the surface - remember you don't have to make sense of any poems - using the meter and rhythm you can turn it into a song or a tune - the words become notes - nothing more nothing less. Equally if you want to apply meaning you can, and we do. Yet if you want you can take the meaning right out of it - that's the beauty of poetry.

Personally I don't like that poem - it may be good from a meterical point of view but that's about it. Things don't have to have total meter to sound beautiful - look at Wilfred Owen and Dylan Thomas - the meter comes and goes or isn't there at all.

You should realise why you're looking at the pro-war poetry, and to impose meaning on a poem you cannot look at it isolation, and this is where literary analysis comes in - which is what we study in literature no?
At the start of a war patriotism is high among the soldiers, Britain is the world superpower in this case and so they are confident they will crush the central powers like they did the tribes in Africa (arguably the German weaponry was slightly more advanced...say hundreds and hundreds of years). As a result the confidence is reflected in the poetry - our old nationalist friend and shit poet Rudyard Kipling basically set the standard for patriotic crap. In the early years of the war hope still remains that it will be over soon - though pessimism is rife. However the soldiers think they shall die for a good cause:

"IF I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.*

This is a fantastic example of the remaining patriotism in the ranks, even though they identify that they will probably die, yet they have no recognised that the reason they die is that false hope that made them follow their country to war. From this we see Siegfried Sassoon and Issac Rosenborg writing mixed, and later depressed messages in their fantastic poetry; and then we come to the masterpiece of World War One. One of the most beautiful poems ever, and one that should never had to have been written; Dulce et Decorum Est. We now reach the stage where patriotism, and the country whom they followed, is to blame for all this death and suffering. The pro war poetry has been forgotten and the soldiers' voices are raised in anger and sadness at the very country they once sang in favour of. To conclude, here is the last stanza of the greatest anti-war poem every written:

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori."

*The Soldier by Rupert Brooke is a beautiful poem, with a horrible message. Ignore the message if you like and indulge in the beauty of the writing.

[bluescouse]

Coming from Wirral, one of our local poets is pretty famous for his anti-war poems, a bloke called Wilfred Owen, He is quite famous for his anti war stand, in the UK.
See here; http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.html

[ket]

It's really hard to find poem about a war that isn't pathetic or simply stupid.
I don't like artificial poetry... Value should be in message, not in form.

[Angry Young Man]

I personally don't like the Soldier that much. Too showy. I like the intellectual satirists take on the Georgian form. What better way to open a poem than "what passing bells for these who dies as cattle"!

Anyway, why is WWI still commeorated as a "Great Battle of 'Freedom'"? It was a disgusting, criminal and vulgar waste of human life. I think it's quite distasteful that the Queen lays a poppy wreath on Remembrance day. It's akin to Heinrich Himmler the third laying a wreath at Auschwitz on liberation day.

I vote that on Nov. 11, we burn effigies of Lloyd George and Genocide Haig.

[luxemburg89]

I vote that on Nov. 11, we burn effigies of Lloyd George and Genocide Haig.


Fuck off, all those poor soldiers, those blind idiots who signed up for a false glory, or those made to fire guns simply because they had their own country's guns on their backs, should be remembered on Nov 11. I think it is totally deplorable that you think of destruction and burning, regardless of who they are, on a day when we should be remembering the innocent dead, not the ignorant that lived through it. Lloyd George and Douglas Haig have no place for rememberance on Nov 11 you stupid fool, they should be forgotten on that day, it is not their day, it is the day of those who died for a worthless cause - that is the tragedy. Haig deserves no place in the memory of the people, nor in your anger - the fact you dare to concern yourself with him, wasting moments you could be thinking about two young men who shot each other on a muddy, wet battlefield when they would rather be playing football or drinking together in a pub. Grow up Romantic Revolutionary, I'm fucking serious too.

Rememberance Day is the greatest day for peace, and I think that peace should be observed. You clearly need to re-read your WWI Poetry books, if you're thinking of a violent act on Nov 11.

[Angry Young Man]

Lloyd George and Haig were trhe very people responsible for the war. It is their fault And my point is that WWI, in many people's eyes, seemed to have had a cause. It's rather the same cause as our constant war with Eurasia. We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia. We weren't at war with Eastasia two years ago.

Anyway, I digress. I don't really see what is so controversial about my point. I agree that the men died lied to - that is why the liars should be publicly dishonoured.