Product Description
“The very content of Owen’s poems was, and still is, pertinent to the feelings of young men facing death and the terrors of war.” —The New York Times Book ReviewWilfred Owen was twenty-two when he enlisted in the Artists’ Rifle Corps during World War I. By the time Owen was killed at the age of 25 at the Battle of Sambre, he had written what are considered the most important British poems of WWI.This definitive edition is based on manuscripts of Owen’s papers in the British Museum and other archives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Amazing
I don't typically like poetry, but I look at this book at least once a month. Wilfred Owen's writing is amazing. It helps that I'm interested in WWI in general, so if that's not of interest to you then maybe it's one to avoid. Five stars...

Powerful
An outstanding edition of Owen's work.The noted British poet C Day Lewis produced what is likely the final edition of Owen's work.Included are all his extant poems, including minor works.Also included are a very interesting Introduction by Day Lewis and an enlightening memoir by the poet Edmund Blunden.The War Poems, of course, are the heart of the book and included are some of the most famous English poems of the 20th century.Reading these famous poems with all of Owen's war poetry only magnifies the powerful effect of Owen's verse.

Wound With War's Hard Wire
Unfortunately, war is an unmitigated part of the human experience.

In places, Owen gives us the guns of war--brutal, percussive descriptions of death as in "Anthem"; in other places, Owen laments delicately as in "Futility" (pg. 135) which is difficult to read without becoming tearful.

Owen shows us a world "wound with war's hard wire" that is "but the trembling of a flare," but Owen also perceives beauty "in hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight" and even finds peace "where shell storms spouted reddest spate."

Owen did not believe that we could fully understand war except we share in the "sorrowful dark of hell" as he experienced it. For us civilians who, thanks to brave soldiers, have not experienced war first-hand, Wilfred Owen brings us as near as we may possibly get.

For me, Owen is the greatest poet ever to write about war.His poetry articulates the duality of "war's hard wire"--the barbs of painful experience and the strong wire that binds our hearts in fellowship and in the "silentness of duty."

Great Read
I am not a poetry nut, I usually can't stomach the stuff.However, this is an exceptional read that can only be summarized as moving.When he describes teaching Christ to drill all day, it was a jaw dropping moment.I have not done the description justice but I invite you to read it for yourself.

Fantastic
Here in this book you will find some of the finest poetry that any author from Britain has ever produced. Owen writes with style and uses words in such a beautiful way that one can only wonder how he was able to do it. His non-war poems are just as astounding as his war poems and this collection is great for any reader of poetry. Highly recommended, this book will not dissapoint. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: World War, 1914-1918; History / Military / World War I; ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

NECESSARY READING FOR OUR PRESENT PATRIOTIC POSTURING AND MILITARY ADVENTURING
As our boys (and girls) return now from war (see The Ground Truth) we do well to read this book lest we send more off to the gross immorality of modern war.

As our boys (and girls) return now from war, let this book guide us in comprehension of the horrors and crimes they have lived and witnessed.

This one book of poetry serves as a powerful treatise of Moral Theology by demonstrating eloquently why it is that modern warfare is always now evil, even more directly than the great pro-life, anti-war statement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops the Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response a Pastoral Letter on War and Peace (Publication / Office of Publishing and Promotion Services, U). This book of poetry by Wilfred Owen is an application of the Good and Blessed Pope John XXIII's vision expressed so vividly in Peace on Earth (Pacem in Terris): Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope John XXIII Addressed to All Mankind.

Dulce et decorum est for us now again to read this book, and to proclaim it, and to proclaim peace, at last.

Wilfrid Owen has been called the finest poet of the First World War, who died in its final days. Thankfully we have here that powerful voice for peace, as powerful a testimony for peace as Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce, as The Red Badge of Courage, Fourth Edition (Norton Critical Edition).

Intrepid editor Jon Stallworthy prepared the 1983 two volume edition of Owen's "Complete Poems and fragments, from which this one volume selection is drawn. THis one volume holds 103 of the poems, including 33 not prevously published in paperback. This book also has 12 fragments of poems.

Each poem bears important notes from Stallworthy, not only the facts of composition, but also new readings and interpretations which help the reader very much in understanding and assessing this important young poet of nearly a century ago, killed in action November 4, 1918 at age 25.

Stallworthy has also separately written a biography of the poet entitled: Wilfred Owen (Oxford Paperbacks). As this book gives an effective overview of Owen's life's work from the early sonnets onwards to his death, those readers interested mainly in his strongest work may do very well to read as well Stallworthy's powerful collection of the War Poems of Wilfred Owen.

It is a testimony we must not miss.

Sublime
I have loved Wilfred Owen's poetry since school days.His exquisite use of language vividly conjures up the horrors of war where young men had no choice in their fate and highlighted the social context in which WWW1 took place. Very moving.

Not to be missed
Indeed, this is a book not to be missed by those who love poetry. Owen's verses are mostly gut-wrenching lines that will burn images in your brain, but that is good, particularly next to other poems that we may have beenfamiliar with, where the idea of war is an "ideal" and soldiersare knights who know no fear, who are immune to death and pain. Owen's waris different: the men die like rats in the trenches, in their own vomit,and glory and honor are not enough to protect agaist mustard gas. That thepoet perished in that war is only a final irony in the short life of asensitive man who saw too much in too short a time. Excellent.

The Truth About WWI
This touching collection of poetry stems from the horrors of Owen's own experiences at the front. From his grim, visual and detailed description of a man dying of poison gas, to his conspiracy theories of the real reasonsbehind the war, Owen uncovers the old lie and disproves it right before oureyes: Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori... ... Read more

Product Description
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, 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. They may be to the next. All the poet can do to-day 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.

Wilfred Owen -1917

*This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition, among Wilfred Owen's papers.
... Read more

Product Description
The most complete biography ever written of the Great War's greatest poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Owen's sexuality
Following up on "beckahi" ... You may feel that Hibberd, in discussing Owen's sexuality, "seems a little over-insistent with too little to back it up," but this only reflects your unwillingness to admit the obvious.Owen's gayness is undisputed, except perhaps, as you say, by his brother Harold who was motivated by a misguided desire to "enshrine" Wilfrid's legend and effectively clean up the details he didn't like.

Owen's and Sassoon's romantic relationship has been well documented, but the proof is in the pudding!Owen *himself* writes about his feelings toward men, both in his private correspondence and, most significantly, in the poetry.Several poems (such as "Arms and the Boy" and "Sonnet To My Friend - With an Identity Disc") have heavy homoerotic content, and one ("To Eros") makes a crystal clear reference to the gender of his beloved.Credit should be given to Hibberd for discussing all this in the light of day.

As for the renewed interest Owen's poetry received in the 1960s, this is mostly due to it being masterfully set by Benjamin Britten in his 1962 "War Requiem".And let's just say that Britten's pacifism was not the only reason he felt a deep kinship toward Owen!;-)

A telling look at a too-little known legend
There's not much that can be said about Wilfred Owen that shouldn't have already been said.Yet the life of this brilliant poet, which was cut short just before the armistice that ended World War I, remains unknown to far too many.Wilfred Owen is referred to as a "soldier-poet" of WWI, which includes him in the company of such literary standards as RupertBrooke, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon.But, as perhaps the greatest poet among the three, he is the least known.Dominic Hibberd's new biography will hopefully set that to rights.

I first fell in love with Wilfred Owen's poetry when I read "Dulce et Decorum est."I found his imagery real and terrifying as it spoke to the true brutality and horrors of "modern" warfare.(The poem is a description of a soldier dying in a gas attack.)Throughout the years I have read much on WWI and on the soldier-poets, but nothing has come as close to so vividly portraying the life of one of them as Hibberd's new biography.

Hibberd begins his very thorough telling of Owen's life, starting with his familial background and youth, and working his way through Owen's years as a parish assistant and his numerous attempts to gain a university education.It seems a long time before we are to encounter Wilfred as a soldier, but Hibberd builds a solid base that explains Wilfred's personality and his attitude towards poetry.Owen's devoutly Evangelical mother had wished her son to enter the service of the church, but after his time in Dunsden, Owen found it increasingly hard to reconcile his Christian faith with his love of literature, finding the two to oppose each other.His one desire in life was to be a poet, and upon entering the English army, he probably had no idea that his voice would come through war.Only a few of Owen's poems (five)were published in his lifetime and after his untimely death, his poetry was collected and published in the 20s and 30s.Afterwards, he seems to disappear entirely from the literary map until a renewed interest in his work arose in the 1960s; an appropriate time since another "war to end all wars" was being fought in Vietnam.

The one area of dicord I take with this biography concerns Owen's sexuality.In the book jacket, and several times throughout the book, Hibberd states that Owen was a homosexual.This is evidently shown through his connections with various personages who were homosexuals, including his friend and mentor, fellow soldier and poet, Siegfried Sassoon.While I don't doubt that this was the truth regarding Owen's sexuality, Hibberd seems a little over-insistent with too little to back it up.Yet perhaps this is due to the inconsistencies that exist in the mystery surrounding Wilfred Owen.Hibberd makes it known that much was done by Owen's brother Harold to paint his brother (as well as himself and the family name) in a better light.As curator of his brother's letters, Harold took great pains to destroy any references that could be suspicious, which must include references to Owen's sexual preferences.As seemingly complete as this biography is, Hibberd himself points out in his epilogue that there are facts about Owen's life that we may never know.

This book is an engaging read for any fan of World War I or any fan of poetry.The literary world is much indebted to Owen, whose poetry spoke the truth in a time or darkness, and whose innovations with style and technique were revered by the very poets he once emulated.If only the literary world was aware of this.Perhaps Dominic Hibberd's book will finally grant Owen his distinguished place and well-deserved fame in modern literature. ... Read more

Product Description
Drama

Characters: 2 males

Set Requirements: Unit set

"Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori", facetiously penned British poet Wilfred Owen, who was soon to die in the Great War. It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. This moving play is about the poetic life and the inter relationship between two of the finest Great War poets: Owen who died and Siegfried Sasson who didn't. Told by means of letters and poetry, Not About Heroes paints a vivid picture of the war. It was staged to great acclaim at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and had an Off Broadway run. ... Read more

Product Description
This selection from the full 1967 edition of Owen's letters includes some early examples, but concentrates on the last seven years of his short life. His letters--almost all to his mother--constitute his self-portrait. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Poet's Journey
Anyone with a passing interest in writing or soldiery should read this book. Owen's passions, ambitions, times, the arc of his life, they're all here. Biographers analyze, novelists rearrange for dramatic impact, Owen wrote for no public audience and yet these letters beat them all. The equal of Keats' letters on poetry. Underappreciated and miraculous. ... Read more

Product Description

Wilfred Owen was an English and Welsh poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke.

Customer Reviews (1)

Not worth it - get the other one
I'm a Kindle Newbie, so maybe I missed something, but..

First, this is an incomplete volume of Owen's works.

Second, and more important, there is no formatting of the poems - they are set like prose. this is something of a problem as his poetry is somewhat "classic" - using rhyme, meter, and so forth.

The other volume "Poems" is more complete and formatted for readability. ... Read more

Product Description
In his draft Preface, Wilfred Owen includes his well-known statement 'My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity'. All of his important poems were written in just over a year, and Dulce et Decorum Est, S.I.W., Futility and Anthem for Doomed Youth still have an astonishing power to move the reader. Owen pointed out that 'All a poet can do today is to warn. That is why all true Poets must be truthful'. His warning was based on his acute observation of the soldiers with whom he served on the Western Front, and his poems reflect the horror and the waste of the First World War. This volume contains all Owen's best-known poems, only four of which were published in his lifetime. He was killed a week before the Armistice in November 1918. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Senimental and moving during wartime
I remember reading about Owen's poetry when looking up information on Siegfried Sasoon.While some of the poems in this collection will be too melancholic for some, there are some great poems in this volume that really make one think about passivity around issues of war and death.I especially liked "To Eros," "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young," and the few that are mentioned in Owen Knowles' excellent introduction.There are approxmately 70 pages of really good poetry here.While it really brings World War I to mind, it is very relevant to our current age's fascination with violence and war.

59 poems.
If you want a good introduction to Wilfred Owen's poems, get the Collected Works ISBN: 0811201325 instead.

"My soul looked down from a vague height...with Death..."
Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and
Isaac Rosenberg are four English poets who enlisted
in World War I, fought in the battles, wrote about
their experiences, and chronicled the truth of what
they saw of war and death in their poems. Of the four,
Owen, Brooke, and Rosenberg were killed in action,
while Sassoon survived until 1967, when he was 80.
Of these four poets of "the Great War," perhaps
Owen is the most lyrical, tragic, and filled with
pathos.In a letter to his mother, Owen wrote
after having seen a group of Scottish troops (who
would soon be dead) and the strange look on some
of their faces: "It was not despair, or terror,
it was more terrible than terror, for it was a
blindfold look, and without expression, like a
dead rabbit's.It will never be painted, and no
actor will ever seize it.And to describe it, I
think I must go back and be with them."
The editor of this volume, Douglas Kerr, says of
Owen: "This fatal vocation to witness -- for Owen
did return to the war, and was killed at the age
of twenty-five, a week before the fighting ended --
is the basis of his reputation as the best-known
of the poets of the Great War, and one of the
outstanding English writers of modern times.All of
Owen's important work in poetry was written in
just over a year, the last year of his life, and
almost all of it is about the war. 'My subject is
War, and the pity of War', he declared. 'The Poetry
is in the pity'. But it was not to be simply a
poetry of mourning, and still less of consolation.
'All a poet can do today is warn', he went on.
'That is why the true Poets must be truthful'."
Owen deals with the issues bravely and dead
on...no flinching or side-stepping.He grapples
with the issues of the War, his questioning of
his faith, and his affectionate awareness. As
Kerr also says, "And although Owen's declared
subject was 'War and the pity of War,' we can
find glimpses of his whole life here -- his
reading, his homosexuality, his friendships, his
love of music, his philosophical doubts, and his
physical enjoyments.These poems contain all
his personal history.*** Owen was not a pacifist,
but described himself as 'a conscientious objector
with a very seared conscience'.His disgust and
compassion, his anger and his courage, have done
as much as any other individual to shape the ways
we understand and feel about modern war."
Here is the beginning of one of Owen's poems
of affection titled "Storm":
His face was charged with beauty as a cloud
With glimmering lightning. When it shadowed me
I shook, and was uneasy as a tree
That draws the brilliant danger, tremulous, bowed.
------------------------- ... Read more

Product Description
Dominic Hibberd covers the final (and most productive) year in Wilfred Owen's life. ... Read more

Product Description
Reissued to mark the centenary of Wilfred Owen's birth, this biography is more than a simple account of his life--the childhood spent in the back streets of Birkenhead and Shrewsbury, the appalling months in the trenches--it is an enquiry into the workings of a poet's mind. Reproducing some of Owen's drawings and facsimile manuscripts of many of his greatest poems, this portrait is indispensable to any student of Wilfred Owen and the poetry of the First World War. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Excellent if flawed bio
Anyone who loves Owen will want to read this biography; it's well-written and engaging and the section devoted to his wartime service is particularly strong. However...there is a refusal by Stallworthy to confront the reality of Owen's sexual nature -- possibly out of respect for Harold Owen, the poet's brother, who provided insights, anecdotes and documents of great value to Stallworthy. Unfortunately Stallworthy must tie himself in knots to avoid labeling Owen homosexual while at the same time citing lines in which Owen makes his physical and romantic desire for men, and the guilt this caused him, quite clear (and the reader is left with the strong impression that Stallworthy knows the score but doesn't feel he can present it honestly). A more recent biography of Owen, by Dominic Hibberd, deals frankly with this critical facet of the poet's nature (which had immense impact on his art and his life in the trenches), as well as being a very well-researched and well-written work all around.If an individual were to read only one biography of Wilfred Owen, I would therefore recommend that he or she choose Hibberd's version. But for anyone who truly loves and admires Owen, Stallworthy's study is highly recommended --Stallworthy provides a fascinating if incomplete picture of the poet; I would suggest reading this first and then moving on to Hibberd.

A very good biography
This is as complete a biography as there can be about a peculiar character. The author takes advantage of his friendship with Wilfred Owen's brother Harold, to get access to family documents and memories indispensable to get to know his subject better. The tone of the biography is balanced, objective and critical: it is not an elegy nor an attack.

Now, Wilfred Owen is one of the best poets of WWI, and his carrer is interesting and, above all, intriguing. Up until he's 20 or so, he's not a very likable character. His mother was a prudish Calvinist, tyranical and at times over-protecting, but she also supported Wilfred at every stage, especially in his early ambitions to be a great poet.

The interesting change is the one Wilfred experiences after he decides to volunteer for the Army. He changes, from being a pretentious, pompous and picky young man, to a courageous, strong, enduring leader. This change is best reflected in his attitude towards war itself: at first, he sees war as a glorious thing, a wonderful place to show grandiosity. Then, after bitter experiences, he realizes that war is not wonderful, but horrible, cruel, unjust. So the tone of his poetry changes from epic to lyrical. The interesting thing is that he is against war and its continuation, but in the meantime behaves bravely and disciplined in battle.

Another good thing about this book is its ability to capture the way of life, places, activities and feelings of that era.

This is, then, a book of interest for lovers of poetry and people who like to read about WWI.

Enlightening look into the workings of a poet's mind.
Anyone with an interest in the Great War and/or the poet Wilfred Owen will probably prosper from the reading of this book.Generally the book is an even and unbiased account of the social and poetic development of youngWilfred.Jon Stallworthy does an admirable job tracking Owen from a dreamyand slightly pompous school boy with an itch to be a famous poet into theman who is responsible for such works as: Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce EtDecorum Est, and Strange Meeting.The book also hosts a variety ofphotograghs featuring Owen, his friends, and family. ... Read more

Product Description
The British poets Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon found themselves psychologically altered by what they experienced in the First World War. Owen was hospitalized in April 1917 for “shell shock” in Scotland, where he met Siegfried Sassoon in June of that year, hospitalized for the same affliction. Ivor Gurney found the war, ironically, to have been a place of relative stability within an otherwise tormented life; When he was wounded during the war’s final year, his doctors observed signs of mental illness, which evolved into incapacitating psychosis by 1922. For each of these men—all poets before the war—poetry served as a way to inscribe continuity into their lives, enabling them to retaliate against the war’s propensity to render the lives of the participants discontinuous. Poetry allowed them to return to the war through memory and imagination, and poetry helped them to bring themselves back from psychological breakdown to a state of stability, based upon a relationship to the war that their literary war enabled them to create and discover. This work investigates the ways in which the poetry of war functioned as a means for these three men to express the inexpressible and to extract value out of the experience of war. Bibliography and index are also included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Dr. Hipp's keen intellect
Dr. Hipp's tome wrestles with a great period of British Literature--World War I.The WWI literary field is as ripe as any, and Dr. Hipp takes on three of its giants.While Dr. Hipp is also known for his Nabokov scholarhip, he clearly is more than dabbling in this subject area.His book will soon be heavily referenced among students and scholars working in WWI literary history. ... Read more

Product Description
This introduction to the life and work of Wilfred Owen - the distinguished war poet, killed in the last week of World War I, aged 25 - marks the centenary of Owen's birth. Williams traces Owen's life, from his childhood in the Borders to military service on the Western Front, and explores his literary development. He also examines Owen's influence on other war poets and 20th-century poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
One of a series designed to provide a new, accessible approach to the works of great poets and playwrights. Each text includes general notes on the text; discussion of themes, issues and context; and suggestions for further reading. ... Read more