Poems for the Week: Wilfred Owen

Yes, I know: it's the beginning of Spring, and I suppose you'd thought it would be Spring poems this week. Well, it isn't. I want Spring poems to be at the beginning of April, so that's next week. This week I thought we'd revisit War poems, because our circulation figures tell us that a number of you liked the last time we did that. I decided also that we would again concentrate on the work of a single poet, as we did recently with Emily Dickinson, and I thought the best choice would be Wilfred Owen. In the previous War poems, I quoted his best-known poem, Dulce et Decorum Est, and we will not repeat that, of course; but he is an important member of the group now called the First World War Poets, and it is interesting to look at his contributions. Before I leave Dulce et Decorum Est, however, I would like to suggest that you go to the Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, and look at the manuscript versions of the poem to see the work that went into the final version with which we are familiar.

You will see also that the earliest draft is dedicated to Jessie Pope, amended to "To a certain Poetess". Neither of these appear on the published version. Jessie Pope was a writer of gaudily patriotic rhymes for a popular newspaper. Part of one of her poems includes:

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 wants to turn to himself in the show?
And who wants a seat in the stand?
Who'll toe the line for the signal to "Go"?
Who'll give his country a hand?

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in Plas Wilmot, Oswestry, which is a small town close to the Welsh border, on March 18, 1893. His father is described as a railway worker, but actually there is very little mention of him in the biographies I have found. The family moved to Birkenhead, directly across the Mersey River from Liverpool in 1897, and then to Shrewsbury, in 1906. One of the sources says that he had a "longing to go to public school and Oxford", although that would have been a considerable target for someone from a modest family at that time. He was the eldest of four children, which would have complicated the matter still further. By the time he left school he was writing verse and dreaming of becoming a poet. Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature says that these early poems were intended for an unpublished collection, Minor Poems-in Minor Keys-by a Minor, although I am not sure what exactly this means! His early work was based on John Keats, although apparently he considered Shelley to be a better poet. After a brief period as a pupil-teacher in 1911, he took up a post as a lay assistant to the Reverend Herbert Wigan at the Vicarage in Dunsden, which is near Reading, a city on the River Thames to the west of London. In return for his duties there, he received tuition, as a preparation to take a University entrance examination.

It appears that Owen's family were practising church-goers; in one of the biographies he is referred to as sharing a "simple evangelical faith with his mother"; but after some time at the Vicarage he apparently told Wigan of his growing doubts. He left Dunsden in February 1913, returning home where he suffered a breakdown, and his mother nursed him back to health. That summer, he took the University entrance examination, and failed.

In September he went to France to teach English at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux. In June, 1914 he became tutor to a family in Bagneres de Bigorre, in the Pyrenees. There he met the French poet Laurent Tailhade (1854-1919), who must have been an interesting person at that stage in his life! In December, he became tutor to an English family living in Bordeaux.

On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, and this essentially initiated what was then called the Great War. In May, 1915, Owen had returned home for a brief visit, but had then returned to France. For reasons which are differently given in the biographical sources, he decided to return to England and enlist in the Army in October; initially in the 3/28th London Regiment, which shortly after became the 2nd Artists' Rifles Officer Training Corps. With his family background and lack of much formal education, he would normally not have been eligible for a commission, but apparently his time in France and knowledge of the language was regarded as sufficient. In June, 1916 he was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment. He finally arrived in France on New Year's Day, 1917.

On the 12th January, he was into the front line at Serre, and took half of his platoon to occupy a former German bunker in No Man's Land. The bunker had something like two feet of water inside, and (of course) the entry faced towards the enemy. It was necessary therefore to post a sentry at the entrance: during a bombardment, the sentry was blinded; this incident became the subject of his poem The Sentry.

He then went to a Transport Course at Abbeville, and on March 1st rejoined his battalion in the line near Le Quesnoy en Santerre. Two weeks later, he suffered a concussion in a fall, and was sent to the Casualty Clearing Station at Gailly. He rejoined the battalion on April 4th, and was involved in heavy fighting at Savy Wood and St. Quentin during April. On May 2nd, his Commanding Officer determined that he was unwell, and he was sent back to Gailly, where he was diagnosed with neurasthenia ('shell shock') and sent back to England, eventually to the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, arriving there on June 25th.

In mid-August, he met Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), who had been admitted to Craiglockhart on July 23rd, and showed him some of his poetry. One of these poems was the sonnet Anthem for Doomed Youth, and Sassoon's penciled notes are apparent on the manuscript copy in the archive referred to above. He also met Robert Graves (1895-1985), and that clearly went well; he attended Graves's wedding on January 31st, 1918. Dulce et Decorum Est was written, or at least begun, there; Owen sent his mother a draft copy dated October 16th, saying "Here is a gas poem, done yesterday."

Owen certainly was affected by Sassoon. Sassoon believed in plain language, using a contemporary vocabulary, writing from one's own experience, and of matters deeply felt. Owen wrote a poem at this time on the basis of these principles; it is The Dead-Beat. Interestingly, Graves felt that perhaps Owen had moved too far in this direction! After he was discharged from Craiglockhart, Owen went to London, with an introductory note to Robert Ross; he had lunch with Ross, and was introduced to Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells. It is difficult to describe how important all this would have been to a young poet: from nowhere he had broken in to the inner circle. After three weeks leave he rejoined his regiment, and after a period in Northern Command, Ripon, on June 5th he was passed fit for service and sent to Scarborough in Yorkshire for general duties. In August he again met Sassoon, who had been wounded and sent to hospital.

After this, he returned to France: this appears to have been as a result of his own request, which under the circumstances is difficult to understand. Perhaps a comment of his at the time may give some clue: "I came out in order to help these boys-- directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can. I have done the first" (October, 1918).

He was posted to his regiment as an officer reinforcement, and in the attack on the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line at Joncourt he was recommended for the award of a Military Cross. On October 30th the regiment took over the line west of the Sambe-Oise canal, near Ors. On October 31st, he wrote a letter to his mother, which was very cheerful and optimistic. On November 4th, during an attempt to establish a crossing of the canal, he was killed in action.

The bells were ringing on November 11, 1918, in Shrewsbury to celebrate the Armistice when the doorbell rang at his parent's home, bringing them the telegram telling them their son was dead.

Earlier, I have referred to The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, and this has a most interesting introduction by Jon Silkin. I have this so annotated, it would cause the Editor of The Mediadrome extreme panic if I were to start using all the interesting analyses of Owen's work therein. I was struck by his identification of Exposure as "arguably, Owen's best, certainly one of his most profound, poems". He also remarks that "At the same time I should like to suggest that the preoccupations of the two undeniably… major war poets, Rosenberg [and] Owen, were, whatever else, religious." He quotes a letter from Owen to his mother, dated May 16th, 1917: 'Thus you see how pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism'. For Owen, killing was wrong.

Silkin discusses an interesting point at some length: it relates to two versions of a line at the end of Strange Meeting:

I was a German conscript, and your friend

and:

I am the enemy you killed, my friend

Silkin argues that the force in the first alternative is much to be preferred to the second, although the latter is the currently accepted version. I agree; although I do also believe that it is very dangerous to allow an editor to second guess a poet, as we saw very clearly in the Emily Dickinson piece. Nevertheless, consistent with our aim here at The Mediadrome to help writers of poetry in the search for the right word, it would be worth your time to read Silkin's argument.

As before, for those of you interested in First World War poetry, I recommend the Penguin book; and I think it would be useful to look at the poetry of Rosenberg, and compare his approach to Owen's.

Now, the choices for the week: I think The Sentry is a key poem in this discussion. I think it may be of value to look at Anthem for Doomed Youth, since this was a key work in his recognition by his peers. The third choice is more difficult: I have considered his Sassoon-inspired piece, The Dead-Beat, but I have decided to follow Jon Silkin, and use Exposure as my third example.

The Sentry

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Exposure

Read more about war poetry here.