Infused with Images rather than just Imagery

Young passion of a century ago forced to maturity in the wet trenches of gas, shells, bullets and bodies. You see his war. m/r

Life and Death in the Trenches | National Review Online

by SYDNEY LEACH May 25, 2015 

 The toll — and legacy — of the Great War. 

Today, we celebrate Memorial Day. In the light of this commemoration, we might once again consider World War I and its legacy. As chroniclers of the period have noted, in addition to our political inheritance from the Great War — including the present-day Middle East — that war yielded one of the highest death tolls in history. It also yielded some extraordinary British poetry, even as many of its creators would number among the dead. To bring that war out of the shadow of forgetfulness in which it is sometimes shrouded and to help recall the lost promise of almost an entire generation, Guy Cuthbertson’s biography Wilfred Owen is to be highly recommended. Cuthbertson provides a fresh and insightful portrait of one of the most famous British war poets and corrects some false impressions that have become attached to him.

As war broke out across Europe, in the luminous, still summer of 1914, England mobilized its equally luminous youth. During the course of the war, the British Empire deployed approximately 5.4 million men to fight on the Western Front. 

Wilfred Owen was one of them — and he was also one of that small but notable group of British soldier-poets whose artistry and bravery improbably coalesced and came to fruition in the trenches of Europe. In addition to Owen, this group included Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg. In this sympathetic biography, the author describes Wilfred Owen’s development from a child in a lower-middle-class family in Edwardian England into a modern poet who would win the admiration and friendship of those well beyond his modest roots. 

Little about young Wilfred Owen hinted at the soldier-poet he would become. 

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418755/life-and-death-trenches-sydney-leach