Wilfred Owen- WWI Poet

Recently I’ve been studying WWI in my Politics and Culture class, while also reading the novel Regeneration, by Pat Barker. Many famous war poets are mentioned, one of the most famous (and lead character of the novel) being Siegfried Sassoon. Who I’d like to focus on right now was someone he mentored. A smaller role in the novel, but a large contributor to war poetry, Wilfred Owen is even considered by some to be a greater poet than his mentor, Sassoon.

Here’s a brief history:

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in 1893. He lived mainly in Berkinhead until he left England to tutor in France before the war. He enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles in 1915 and was commissioned later in 1917 as a second lieutenant with the Manchester Regiement. After some severely traumatic experiences, Owens was diagnosed with shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital where he met his famous mentor, Siegfried Sassoon.

Although Owen had already been experimenting with poetry before the war, his light-hearted sonnets took a decidedly different path when encouragement by Sassoon had him practice more realism in his work. Owen started writing a bit in “Sassoon’s style” but mostly used that to help flavor his own work with a more “writing from experience” slant. As editor for “The Hydra “, a magazine published at Craiglockhart, he was able to present a few of his poems. Unfortunately, Owens was unable to see any work published before his death in 1918 (a week before the war ended).

Owen’s poetry was saved though, through the combined efforts of his former friend and mentor, Sassoon, and Eidith Sitwell and Edmund Blunden. Blunden edited his poems into a new anthology in 1931 and from then on Owen’s popularity as a war poet has grown. Today he is considered one of the greatest if not THE greatest war poet from the First World War. His extraordinary poems on the horrors of trench and gas warfare make it hard to ignore how terrible and life changing the war was.

To see Wilfred Owen’s poetry go to:

http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Wilfred_Owen/

And for a sample, here’s one of his most famous 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

Bitten 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.