#which makes Owens poetry particularly horrific when you consider the following events such as the Second World War and pretty much all
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Preface (Unfinished)
-Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion, or power,
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except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.
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They may be to the next.
All the poet can do today is to warn.
That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last,
I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia,— my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.
#I know this isn’t technically a poem#however it’s the preface to Owen’s would-be anthology#which pretty much tells you all you need to know about the tone of his works#but since I post a hell of a lot of Wilfred Owen and Sassoon’s poems I figured I might as well have this too#^ I mean he tells you pretty much straight off the bat that it isn’t meant to be pretty or patriotic or anything you really want to hear as#a soldier in the First World War or someone at home with loved ones fighting#but that’s exactly the point - it was never intended for them; it was intended for us here in the future#to show the truth of war#if anyone here’s ever read Uriconium you know Owen is FASCINATED by the cyclical nature of history#which makes Owens poetry particularly horrific when you consider the following events such as the Second World War and pretty much all#following wars including the horrors happening around the world to this day in places like Ukraine and Palestine#I’ll shut up now but anyway#literature#poetry#Wilfred Owen#ww1#remembrance#war poetry
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