Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), the outstanding British poet of World War I was invalided home from the Somme in 1917 and in hospital met Siegfried Sassoon, who later arranged the publication of his poems (1920). Owen returned to the trenches and died attempting to cross a canal under machine-gun fire on November 4, a week before the armistice. No-one else expressed with such passionate intensity the utter waste of war. Benjamin Britten set nine of Owen's poems in his War Requiem (also in the Lifex series: Britten by David Matthews). Anthem for Doomed Youth Sonnet written towards the end of the war, which is an indictment of the appalling slaughter. It begins with the question 'What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?' and concludes that they will be commemorated only in 'the tenderness of silent minds,/And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.' In the poem Strange Meeting Owen imagines coming face to face in Hell with an adversary ('I am the enemy you killed, my friend'). The dead man describes vividly how his death deprives the world of the truth he could tell about 'the pity of war'.
- ISBN10 1904950051
- ISBN13 9781904950059
- Publish Date 1 October 2005
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 18 August 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Haus Publishing
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 192
- Language English