FIRST WORLD WAR POETS

This collection of short biographies of those remarkable men who sought to record and convey the horrors of the Great War in poetry draws on letters, memoirs and portraits in a variety of media. They touch on boredom, banality, vulgarity, delays, confusions, errors, humour, homesickness, fulfilment, fun, failure, triumphs and corruption as well as fear, suffering and violence. Blunden suggested they were love-poets experiencing all love but making poetry only out of its anguish or out of those snatched moments like the voice of a skylark or the sound of marching boots on the duck board which signified the proximity of death. Key poems by each of the poets are reproduced in full, and familiar images of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves. A.A.Milne, Edmund Blunden, Herbert Read, Ford Madox Ford and Siegfried Sassoon are presented along with the haunting faces of lesser-known poets such as Isaac Rosenberg and Ivor Gurney to provide a new approach to one of the most devastating events in history. A glamorous National Portrait Gallery publication heavy with full page colour photographs drawings and other images. 120 page paperback.