What I like about Wilfred Owen's poetry is how real it is. People often find it depressing. Of course it's depressing. It's war poetry. War is depressing. People lose limbs. Bright, healthy, happy boys go off in search of courage and with dreams of glory. Many of them come home in body bags, if at all. Owen saw this long before the rest of the world. He was a fatality of the first World War, the so-called "Great War," and he saw that the war he fought was sad and disgusting. He commanded men, men he thought were brave, strong, and worthy of all the best things in the world, and watched them die. He watched as gas hit and he saw men's faces hanging "like a devil's sick of sin" as they hoped and waited for death. His poetry is beautiful and horrifying and disgusting and heart-wrenching and political.
I guess the biggest tragedy is that he died before the end. He found himself in the trenches in France and never lived to see the fruition of his growth. After so loudly opposing war and getting so close to peace, he just...died. He warned that death for one's country was neither sweet nor glorious, but he was both sweet and glorious, and his death was a tragic loss.
"Blood's dirt," he laughed, looking away
Far off to where his wound had bled
And almost merged forever into clay.
"The world is washing out its stains," he said.
"It doesn't like our cheeks so red:
Young blood's its great objection.
But when we're duly white-washed, being dead,
The race will bear Field-Marshal God's inspection."
--"Inspection" by Wilfred Owen
I did a poetry seminar on Duclce Et Decorum Est. I came to pretty much the same conclusions. No one in the class cared - they were tired (first period, and all) and worried about their own impending presentations. Thank you for perking up and not being like my classmates. Thank you for finding a favourite in Owen.
ReplyDelete:D I enjoyed it immensely, Noah!
ReplyDeleteI think Dulce Et Decorum Est is one of my all-time favorite poems.