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The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

Paperback | Pages: 192 pages

Rating: 4.34 | 3336 Users | 121 Reviews

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Title	:	The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Author	:	Wilfred Owen
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	New Directions Book
Pages	:	Pages: 192 pages
Published	:	January 17th 1965 by New Directions (first published 1918)
Categories	:	Poetry. Classics. War. World War I. Fiction

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I make no apology for starting with one of Owen’s more well-known poems Dulce Et Decorum Est:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

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 title is from Horace: It is sweet and right to die for your country.
This collection includes Owen’s pre-war poems and lots of fragments of poems. It is easy to see that the really powerful standout poems are all war poems; there is a vast difference between these poems and his early work, hardly surprising. Most of Owen’s poems were published posthumously and those that were published were in an In-house magazine at Craiglockhart hospital. There is a memorial piece at the end by Edmund Blunden written in 1931 which contains extracts from his letters and is fascinating as it shows some of the ways his thought was developing. The passion and compassion of Owen towards the suffering and disenchanted stands out. Owen understands the men he is with; he understands soldiers and their role and he is angry on their behalf with those in power and those who criticise from the side-lines:

except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful
dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling
of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell.
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mind. These men are worth
Your tears: you are not worth their merriment.

Owen’s letters show how his political thought was developing in a pacifist direction and he says that his conception of Christianity was incompatible with pure patriotism. He does not shirk addressing difficult issues including the effect of war on mental health in the poem “Mental Cases” and placing blame where he thinks it lies:

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

— These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
— Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
— Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness
This could easily become a run through of the poems; they are now well known and much studied and still retain their power. If you haven’t read them, do have a look, but I’ll sign off this review with Anthem for Doomed Youth:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

Particularize Books Conducive To The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Original Title:	Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
ISBN:	0811201325 (ISBN13: 9780811201322)
Edition Language:	English
Setting:	Oswestry,1893(United Kingdom) University of London,1910(United Kingdom) Bordeaux,1913(France) …more Sambre-Oise Canal,1918(France) Monroe, North Carolina,1997(United States) …less

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Ratings: 4.34 From 3336 Users | 121 Reviews

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For anyone out there that wishes to understand the effects of war in the minds of a young man, read his poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" as it is one of the greatest I have read, written in such a descriptive manner you feel as if you were the one dying in the trenches. Truly beautiful in the traumatic of it all. Dulce Et Decorum Est read by Christopher Eccleston

I am humbled by his words and craft, and grateful for his ability to bring his emotions and the time alive to me. The emotions are timeless. And his time and place, not one to be forgotten. I do not immediately embrace poetry, but in Owen, I found a quick friend... one I would like to share a share pint with, one I would like to hold in friendship through his horrors.

The first Wilfred Owen poem I ever read was the first one anybody ever reads: Dulce et Decorum est. It was in high school, and I was already a history reading nerd by then, so I knew a bit about WWI. But when I read Owens poem I felt and understood the war in a way historical accounts and even All Quiet on the Western Front couldnt convey to me. In just a few brutal lines Owen brings home the ugly brutality of a gas attack, pulling off wars romantic mask and revealing it for what it really is. I

Owen strongly expresses about disenchantment of war but with a rare and unique perspective of a soldier unlike others as an observer. This angle of writing creates the understanding of the psyche and emotional tearing of soldier inside out. Here the thought of soldier as a victim is more emphasized rather that of being victor or hero of war. A covert sarcasm mixed with humor supplemented with pity in form of poetry of despair is found in every passing lines. Dulce et decorum, Anthem for doomed

Too real to stand much, the truth of war untold is.



I read a free download version, and also found all poems missing from that version online. There are really not that many effective anti-war poems. These are among the best, and are now over 100 years old. Owen does some different sorts of things with rhyme. His selection of images is intense and in-your-face. "Strange Meeting" is one of the poems you are most likely to come across. It is set in a place after death where those from both sides meet. Even today we tend to separate the dead