War+Poetry

=War Poetry - 12EN= We will be looking closely at several short texts on war, as preparation for AS 2.3, but also as a possibility for AS 2.1, and also the 'Significant Connections' standard, AS 2.7.

=**__Open all the links on our Wiki here, and have a good read of the contents__**=

Around Anzac Day it’s interesting to contrast Laurence Binyon’s classic [|//For the Fallen//] (1914) with McGough’s //On Picnics// (1967) copied below - different perspectives on war in very different times. There is plenty of potential for discussion of these viewpoints, as well as analysis of imagery and sound devices. Compare also, Binyon's ‘ // For the Fallen’ // and ‘ // Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen //.

A couple of lines from ‘//For the Fallen’// that may sound familiar to you from ANZAC Day ceremonies:

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

Check out the website: []

Now take note of the different tone in McGough's poem: at the going down of the sun and in the morning I try to remember them but their names are ordinary names and their causes are thighbones tugged excitedly from the soil by French children on picnics
 * ‘On Picnics’**

Roger McGough 1967
> > **This impressive Powerpoint presentation on WW1 came from English Online** > > ** Below is a selection of 'ANTI-WAR’ POETRY AND LYRICS ** > > **Below is a selection of 'PRO-WAR’ POETRY AND LYRICS**
 * [|Suicide in the Trenches]: Siegfried Sassoon
 * [|Does it Matter?]: Siegfried Sassoon (and most [|other poems] by him)
 * [|Let England Shake]: PJ Harvey (a number of songs from this album, but in particular In the Dark Places and Colour of Earth)
 * [|Hero of War]: Rise Against
 * [|Words I Never Said]: Lupe Fiasco
 * [|A Square Dance]: Roger McGough
 * [|Brothers in Arms]: Dire Straits
 * [|Exposure]: Wilfred Owen
 * [|Disabled]: Wilfred Owen (and many [|other poems] by him)
 * [|Any Soldier to His Son]: Author unknown
 * [|Dear Mr President]: Pink
 * The lyrics of Dear Mr President []
 * [|Masters of War]: Bob Dylan
 * [|War Poetry]: Kate Clanchy
 * [|Universal Soldier]: Donovan
 * [|The Gunner’s Lament]: James K Baxter
 * [|MCMXIV]: Philip Larkin
 * [|Why Patriots are a Bit Nuts in the Head]: Roger McGough
 * [|Order me a Transparent Coffin and Dig My Crazy Grave]: Adrian Mitchell
 * [|Goodnight Saigon]: Billy Joel
 * [|I Have a Rendezvous With Death]: Alan Seeg
 * [|The Call]: Jessie Pope (and [|other poems] written by her)
 * [|The Soldier]: Rupert Brooke (and [|other poems] written by him)
 * [|Palestinian National Anthem] (listen to it [|here])
 * [|Argentinian National Anthem] (listen to it [|here])
 * [|The Kiss]: Siegfried Sassoon
 * [|Into Battle]: Julian Grenfell
 * [|Maori Battalion Marching Song]
 * [|To A Conscript]: Sir Herbert Read
 * [|The American Flag]: Joseph Rodman Drake
 * [|Before Action]: W.N. Hodgson
 * I’ll Make a Man of You: James Fanning


 * Compare the attitudes expressed about war in these poems by Pope and Owen ||
 * < **Who's for the Game?**
 * By Jessie Pope**

Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played, The red crashing game of a fight? Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid? And who thinks he’d rather sit tight? Who’ll toe the line for the signal to ‘Go!’? Who’ll give his country a hand? Who wants a turn to himself in the show? And who wants a seat in the stand? Who knows it won’t be a picnic – not much- Yet eagerly shoulders a gun? Who would much rather come back with a crutch Than lie low and be out of the fun? Come along, lads – But you’ll come on all right – For there’s only one course to pursue, Your country is up to her neck in a fight, And she’s looking and calling for you.

__About Jessie Pope__ Jessie Pope was an English author, born in Leicester March 18, 1868 and educated at the North London Collegiate School for Girls from 1883 to 1886. Pope began writing for Punch; between 1902 and 1922 she contributed 170 poems to the magazine. She was a prolific writer of humorous verse, articles, and short stories, which were published in many other popular periodicals of the early twentieth century, including the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Evening Standard, The Queen, and the Westminster Gazette, before being collected in such books as Paper Pellets (1906) and Airy Nothings (1909). She received accolades as the ‘foremost woman humourist’ who had ‘nimble wit and a polished facility for rhyme and scansion’ for her verse on subjects that varied from ‘Love in a Car’ and ‘With the Beagles in Herts’ to ‘The Ideal Home’ and ‘Men I Might Have Married’. Airy Nothings contained the poems ‘Any Woman to a Suffragette’ and ‘Any Suffragette to any Woman’, which it could be argued show Pope taking a balanced view of the controversial fight for the franchise.

Pope is perhaps best known—and indeed most vilified—for her patriotic poetry of the First World War. Published from 1914 onwards in newspapers like the Daily Mail, her verse was later collected in the volumes Jessie Pope's War Poems (1915), More War Poems (1915), and Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times (1916), as well as in charity gift-books such as The Fiery Cross (1915). Widely disseminated and widely read, her war poetry attracted both admiration and condemnation. The opening page of Jessie Pope's War Poems reproduces a facsimile of a letter sent from ‘a soldier at the front’ that proclaims her poems ‘much admired by us all out here’ and ‘will be such a “buck up”’ for the soldier's wife. Her work compelled Wilfred Owen to dedicate ‘Dulce et decorum est’ in his original manuscript ‘To Jessie Pope, etc’, then in a subsequent version ‘To a Certain Poetess’ before deleting the ‘dedication’ altogether in favour of the more cryptic reference to ‘my friend’ in the final lines that precede ‘the Old Lie’.

[] ||< **Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori**
 * by Wilfred Owen**

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, — My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Note: **‘Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori’** is from Horace. Owen wrote in a letter to his mother: "The famous Latin tag means of course It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. Sweet! and decorous!" Written in 1917 and first published in 1920. Early drafts of the poem contain the dedications 'To Jessie Pope etc' and 'To a certain Poetess'. Before World War I, Pope was the author of children's books and light verse. Her war related verse was collected in 1915 in Jessie Pope's War Poems and More War Poems.

[] || Wilfred Owen’s War Poems on RapGenious!!!

1. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’
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2. ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’
=[]= = = DISCOVER EPIC - open the door to databases that give us resources and supporting materials for many texts we study in English In contrast with the title, which suggests that war, patriotic duty, and even death for one's country are "sweet and fitting," the poet shows us nothing noble about the wretched condition of the soldiers on their march. These troops appear far different than the ones the British people might have been used to reading about. They are "bent double" under the weight of their packs, but bent also, perhaps, under the weight of duty itself. Using simile—a figure of speech expressing the similarity between two seemingly unlike things—the speaker compares the troops to "old beggars" and "hags." The effect of the comparisons is to create a frightful, almost medieval atmosphere. Moreover, the comparison of the soldiers with "hags," or witches, creates the sense of the unnatural and introduces the possibility of some kind of evil at hand. The "haunting fires" reinforce this sense. Also notice, beginning the second line, the sequence of participles—"knock-kneed," "coughing," etc.—that suggest the sounds and persistence of battle. In the second line, the speaker defines his relationship to the situation: "we cursed through the sludge." By identifying himself as one of the soldiers, he establishes the authority necessary to comment on the hardships he describes. In addition, he reminds us that war is not a far-away spectacle, not the heroic scene described by Tennyson in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," but as real and as close to us as the speaker himself. The speaker lists the soldiers' tribulations in short, direct phrases, varying at times from the dominant iambic meter to highlight certain details. A number of figurative uses are introduced here as well to demonstrate the suffering of the troops. They are "blood-shod"—a use of metaphor since it is an implied, rather than directly stated, comparison between the blood on the troops' feet and the boots they have "lost." Also note a similar use of hyperbole—a figure of speech based on exaggeration—when the speaker says the men are "deaf" to the cries of their comrades and that "all went lame; all blind." The troops are "drunk with fatigue"—an ironic echo of the "sweetness" in the title. Even the falling artillery shells, or "Five-Nines," are "tired" and "outstripped" by the grave nature of the men's fatigue. The images presented thus far create a somber, static, and miserable world, one in which the indignities the soldiers suffer seem as if they will go on indefinitely. This stasis, however, provides a grim contrast with the explosive violence of the second stanza. // Five-Nines // : 5.9-inch shells A shift in voice brings on the sudden gas attack. In two sharp syllables someone—we cannot tell who—warns the men of a gas attack. We watch the men scramble for their gas masks in "an ecstasy of fumbling." Owen might intend irony in the use of the word "ecstasy," which can mean "a frenzy of exalted delight." Certainly the men should not delighted about the attack. In an older sense of the word, however, Owen might simply mean that the soldiers have entered a state of emotion so intense that rational thought is obliterated. A third possibility is that Owen is suggesting a kind of mystical experience. As the men fight for their lives, they may feel the kind of religious ecstasy associated with near-death experiences. At any rate, one soldier fails to put his mask on in time and is poisoned by the gas. In World War I both the allies and the Germans used mustard gas as a way of both attacking and striking fear into the enemy. If breathed without the protection of a mask, the gas quickly burns away the lining of the respiratory system. Thus the speaker compares the soldier with a man consumed in "fire or lime." Such a fate is not often compared with "drowning," yet the speaker knows that victims of mustard gas effectively drown in the blood from their own lung tissues. In addition, mustard gas has a particular hue—"as under a green sea." The speaker views the "flound'ring" man as if through an underwater mask, adding to the nightmarish and surreal atmosphere of the poem thus far. In these two lines the incident is transformed to one that seems like a dream to an actual dream—a recurring vision or nightmare that the speaker cannot escape. In this dream the "guttering, choking" soldier "plunges" at the "helpless" speaker, seeking assistance. Although the speaker can do nothing for the man, there is still a feeling of responsibility and guilt. Perhaps many survivors of such attacks felt the same sense of guilt, wondering why they lived while their friends died. In this last stanza the speaker directly addresses the reader—one who, presumably, is reading in the safety of England and who has not personally witnessed the type of horror just described. The speaker suggests that if the reader too were subject to such memories, they would "smother" the reader's conscience in the same way the mustard gas has suffocated the soldier. The images that follow depict the aftermath of the attack: the soldier's slow death, the "eyes writhing" in his face, the "blood come gargling from his lungs." Note among these descriptions the powerful use of alliteration, or the repetition of initial consonant sounds in closely related words. A good example of this can be found in lines 18 and 19: "wagon," watch," white," "writhing." The speaker combines this sound device with the most discomforting words he can conjure. The soldier's face is like "a devil's sick of sin;" his lungs are "corrupted" and "obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud / of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues" that suggest unseemly diseases. If the reader—"my friend"—could see such horrors, the speaker insists, then his or her attitude toward war would change. The reader would not encourage war-like fervor, would not repeat patriotic slogans such as //Dulce et decorum est / pro patria mori//, a saying which would have been familiar to Owen's contemporaries. In this part of the poem, the Latin phrase is used without irony: it is simply called a "Lie." Owen suggests that if the reader continue to spread that lie to young men prone to believing romantic sentiment, then those young men will likely receive a fate like that of the fallen soldier. Thus the final line is the shortest of the poem, bringing on the full effect of the three crucial words, //Pro patria mori//: to die for one's country.
 * From EPIC New Zealand, **** Search: Literature and the Arts **
 * Student Resources in Context: **
 * Search: Wilfred Owen **
 * Explanation: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ **
 * Lines 1-4 **
 * Line 2 **
 * Lines 5-8 **
 * Line 8 **
 * Lines 9-11 **
 * Lines 12-14 **
 * Lines 15-16 **
 * Lines 17-24 **
 * Lines 25-28 **

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= Remembering World War 1: = It's a little while until the Centenary of WW1 but you will be interested to see this stunning online resource which has been published to support us all, here in NZ, as we run up to 2014: []

=This next one is a prizewinning website full of World War 1 poetry resources:= []

** Make sure you explore DigitalNZ (link below) as it will throw up some fantastic resources: **
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= Now, for a New Zealand perspective on what the Gallipoli experience was like for New Zealand Maori poet, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, listen to him reciting his Poem 'Gallipoli Peninsula'. Notice how he reflects that nature goes on, regardless of what atrocities mankind gets up to in war: = From: ** new zealand electronic poetry centre **

Recording ** : **
 * ALISTAIR TE ARIKI CAMPBELL**

Gallipoli Peninsula **
 * Gallipoli Penninsula **
 * [|lo-fi] (rm : 150KB, streaming) **
 * [|hi-fi] (mp3 : 850KB ) **

It was magical when flowers appeared on the upper reaches – not that we saw much of the upper reaches. But when we did, we were reminded of home when spring clothed the hills with flowers. The dead lying among them seemed to be asleep. I can never forget the early mornings, before the killings started up, when the sea was like a mirror under little wisps of cloud breathing on its surface, so dazzling it hurt the eye. and the ships, so many of them, they darkened the sea. But the evenings too were magical, with such hues in the sky over Macedonia, so many colours, gold bars, green, red, and yellow. We noticed these things, when the firing stopped and we had respite. It was good to feel, during such moments, that we were human beings once more, delighting in little things, in just being human.

[//Gallipoli and Other Poems// (Wai-te-ata Press, 1999)] []

= Notice how the famous poem below also begins with an image of flowers, the poppy that is now worn on ANZAC day in remembrance of the soldiers who lost their lives in World War 1. Notice too the way nature goes on, with the larks singing above the mayhem below on the battlefield: =


 * IN FLANDERS FIELDS **

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch, be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.


 * John McCrae **

[]

About John McCrae

by John McCrae, May 1915

It is thought that doctor **John McCrae** (30th November 1872 — 28th January 1918) began the draft for his famous poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ on the evening of the 2nd May, 1915 in the second week of fighting during the Second Battle of Ypres.

It is believed that the death of his friend, Alexis Helmer, was the inspiration for McCrae's poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. The exact details of when the first draft was written may never be known, because there are various accounts by those who were with McCrae at that time.

▪ One account says that he was seen writing the poem sitting on the rear step of an ambulance the next day while looking at Helmer's grave and the vivid red poppies that were springing up amongst the graves in the burial ground.

▪ Another account says that McCrae was so upset after Helmer's burial that he wrote the poem in twenty minutes in an attempt to compose himself.

▪ A third account by his commanding officer, **Lieutenant Colonel Morrison**, states that John told him he drafted the poem partly to pass the time between the arrival of two groups of wounded at the first aid post and partly to experiment with different variations of the poem's metre.

John McCrae, was serving as a Major and a military doctor and was second in command of the 1st Brigade Canadian Field Artillery. The field guns of his brigade’s batteries were in position on the west bank of the Ypres-Yser canal, about two kilometres to the north of Ypres. The brigade had arrived there in the early hours of 23rd April.

[]

Flanders Poppies The Red Flanders Poppy, Papaver rhoeas, is the poppy to which John McCrae refers in his poem. The plant is a hardy annual which grows to about 50 cm tall. It likes a sunny position protected from wind, and well drained soil turned to “a fine tilth”. In compacted soil, the seeds can lie dormant.

== Here is a different perspective on weapons of war, and their victims, by New Zealand historian and poet, Keith Sinclair. We are invited to think about what it would be like for us here in New Zealand, if we were about to be bombed, as were those people living in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. ==

Compare this poem and its messages with Hone Tuwhare's ‘No Ordinary Sun’.
//The bomb is made will drop on Rangitoto.// //Be kind to one another; kiss a little// And let love-making imperceptibly Grow inwards from a kiss. I’ve done with soldiering, Though every day my leave-pass may expire.
 * ‘The Bomb is Made’** Keith Sinclair

//The bomb is made will drop on Rangitoto.// The cell of death is formed that multiplied Will occupy the lung, exclude the air. //Be kind to one another; kiss a little// The first good-bye might each day last forever.

//The bomb is made will drop on Rangitoto.// The hand is born that gropes to press the button. The prodigal grey generals conspire To dissipate the birthright of the Asians. //Be kind to one another; kiss a little.//

//The bomb is made will drop on Rangitoto.// The plane that takes off persons in a hurry Is only metaphorically leaving town, So if we linger we will be on time. //Be kind to one another; kiss a little.//

//The bomb is made will drop on Rangitoto.// I do not want to see that sun-burned harbour, Islandless as moon, red-skied again, Its tide unblossomed, sifting wastes of ash. //Be kind to one another; kiss a little,// Our only weapon is this gentleness. Keith Sinclair


 * ‘No Ordinary Sun’ **** By Hone Tuwhare **

Tree let your arms fall: raise them not sharply in supplication to the bright enhaloed cloud. Let your arms lack toughness and resiliance for this is no mere axe to blunt nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again to the moons pull. No more incline a deferential head to the wind's talk, or stir to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shaginess shall not be wreathed with the delightful flight of birds nor shield nor cool the adour of unheeding lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball. This is no gallant monsoon's flash, no dashing trade wind's blast. The fading green of your magic emanations shall not make pure again these polluted skies. . . for this is no ordinary sun.

O tree in the shadowless mountains the white plains and the drab sea floor your end at last is written []

=Recommended war-related texts:=
 * //The Things They Carried//, by Tim O'Brien (Unlike other anthologies, the book comprises interconnected texts within a unified whole. The over-arching context is the Vietnam War. The book deals with a platoon of men, each chapter focussing on an individual from the platoon. You can look at chapters as individual but connected texts.)