Poetry of the Great War : an anthology by edited by Dominic Hibberd and John Onions.
The 184 selections of this splendid anthology are thematically divided into eight parts (each further sectioned): 1914, Heroes, The Western Front, Christ and Nature, Civilians, Soldiers, Poets and Poetry in Wartime, 1918 and After, and Postscript. The arrangement is ``meant to be helpful rather than definitive''; it certainly is not precious. Individual poems are given dates of composition or of first publication; not surprisingly, the greatest representation is given to Blunden, Graves, Gurney, Owen, Rosenberg, and Sassoon. The editors' introduction has separate commentaries on each part, chronicling the evolution of attitudes within each chronologically ordered division; it features such topics as the tendency of previous such collections ``to reinforce one view or another'' of the Great War, the corrective application here of exact chronology, the Georgian influence, the Romantic inheritance, and British ``prussianism.'' Frequent attention is drawn to the themes and manners of the poetry. With notes on the poems (including influences and pithy explanatory remarks as appropriate), biographical notes, select bibliography, notes on illustrations, and indexes. This is an immaculately crafted anthology with its wide and authoritative arrangement, and is recommended unhesitatingly to both a popular and academic readership.-L.K. Mackendrick, University of Windsor
Call Number: PR1195.W65 P64 1986
Publication Date: 1986
Evening Train by
At her most moving and meditative, impressive and musical, Denise Levertov addresses in her poetry collection, Evening Train, the nature of faith and love, the imperiled beauty of the natural world, and the horrors of the Gulf War.
More Light, Larger Vision by
An outstanding collection of tanka. The pattern (established by the Japanese poet Jien in 1190) is sensitively adapted to our age and culture and is a mind-enriching delight to read.
The tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as "short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form.