Product Description

The famous - Kipling, Brooke, Sassoon, Blunden, Owen, Graves -
are all here, as well as others almost entirely forgotten now. Seventy-two
poets are included; twenty-one of them died in action. From the early
exultation to the bitter disillusion, the tragedy of the First World War is
precisely traced in the words of those who lived through it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34309 in Books
• Published on: 1986-01-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 230 pages

Times Education Supplement
'To read through this anthology is ... to live the years
1914-1918, adding to the images of battle which most of us have already,
the actual feelings expressed by the soldier poets who lived, and died,
through trench warfare'

Illustrated London News
'It is all here, the mud and rats of the trenches, the hellish
noise of the bombardment, the insane waste of life, the high heroism and
the bitter cynicism'

The Times
'Mr Gardner, who has chosen, introduced and put notes to this
admirable anthology, shows the First World War poets in all moods'

Customer Reviews

Deeply moving
The poetry of soldiers of the First World War.

Supposedly the War to end ALL Wars, it was a bloody, brutal and harrowing campaign. It wasn't over by Christmas as many had speculated and lasted four long years and it marked the emergence of a new type of warfare.

The poetry in this anthology covers those four years of war, from the eager young men joining up to fight the enemy on foreign soil, to the maimed returning home and, of course, those who never returned at all.

The poems are deeply moving, especially those of the men stuck in the trenches, knee deep in mud with nothing to listen to but the sound of shells exploding outside and nothing to see but their friends injured and killed. Some of the poems were written by men who never returned, for whom their poetry is their legacy.

I defy anyone to look at war the same way after reading these.