Three Poets of the First World War

by Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen

An essential new collection of poetry from the First World War.

This indispensable anthology brings together the works of three major poets from the First World War. Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) was a classical music composer and poet who published two volumes of poems, "Severn and Somme" and "War's Embers." Wilfred Owen's (1893- 1918) realistic poetry is remarkable for its details of war and combat. Isaac Rosenberg's (1890-1918) "Poems from the Trenches" is widely considered one of the finest examples of war poetry from the period. Carefully selected by Jon Stallworthy, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, these poems comprise a landmark publication that reflects the disparate experiences of war through the voices of the soldiers themselves.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, War, World War I, History, Literature, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2008

About the author

Composer and author Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester and was educated at the cathedral there where he proved a very gifted student. He began composing music at the age of 14 and in 1911 secured a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. He was described by Charles Villiers Stanford as potentially "the biggest" of many distinguished pupils he had taught-which included Ralph Vaughn Williams-but, also as "unteachable." This being because of his propensity for mood swings which not only made concentration very difficult for him, but also precipitated in a breakdown in 1913.
After the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted as a private soldier with the Gloucester Regiment. It was during the war where he began to write poetry. Just before completing his first book of poetry, Severn and the Somme, he was wounded in the shoulder in April 1917. He returned to active duty not long after finding a publisher for his book to be gassed in September that same year. While recovering he fell in love with nurse Annie Nelson Drummond who initially reciprocated his feelings only to sever their correspondence before a second breakdown in February 1918.
Following the war his mental condition deteriorated further to the point where he was declared insane by his family in 1922. He spent his remaining years institutionalized, where he yet remained prolific albeit largely unrecognized.
After his death from tuberculosis in 1937 his friend Marion Scott worked to preserve his letters and manuscripts.
Some two-thirds of his musical output remains unpublished.
Ivor Gurney is commemorated as one of 16 Great War Poets in Westminster Abbey.

Reviews

[Faustibooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m very new to poetry, so when I got this I had no clue whether I would like it or not, but I definitely did! This book included a collection of poetry by three poets from the First World War: Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen. Their poetry is beautiful yet harsh, showing the raw brutality of war and the tragedy surrounding it. At times it was actually quite depressing to read it and I had to take breaks. Just to think that two of the poets were killed during the war (Owen getting killed one week before the armistice in 1918!!) and the other ending up in a mental asylum after the war made me pretty sad. All wars are horrible but I feel this even more when I read about the First World War. Many of the poems were very moving and stuck with me long after reading them. It was a pretty heavy read.

Some of favourites were: Gurney: To His Love, Photographs, The Interview. Rosenberg: In the Trenches, The Immortals. Owen: Apologia pro Poemate Meo, The Letter, Dulce et Decorum Est, S.I.W., Greater Love, Disabled, The Sentry. I will definitely come back to this book again!

(Excerpt from Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen)
“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,
Obscene as cancer, 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.”

[Abe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilfred Owen has become one of my favorite poets. After reading only the first few of his poems here, I promptly ordered his compete poetry. He is visceral and affecting. A true anti-war writer whose gut-wrenching power with words strikes clear through you.

W. B. Yeats claimed Owen's work could not rise to the status of great poetry. He said a true tragedy requires some type of redemption, as all the tragic heroes of the ages have at least caused others to learn or benefit from folly. I disagree with Yeats. Owen fully comprehends war, mankind's greatest tragedy: it has no redemptive qualities. Nothing justifies it. It creates no heroes worth the cost of creating them. It's inane to claim a war poem isn't great because it doesn't wave a little redemption flag in the last stanza.

Rosenberg's poems are solid, but Gurney's I found a little lacking. Considering the book is skewed percentage-wise toward Gurney, and it starts off with his poems, it's not the best collection, and I understand why it undersold. But damn, Owen's poetry raises the average.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to rate this book with stars. The book is front loaded with Gurney's poems which I found tedious... then on to Rosenberg who was quite a bit better, but also not memorable. Fortunately the book finishes with Owens whose poems are visceral, lacerating and heartfelt. I should have just grabbed a separate volume of Owens and maybe another of Rosenberg instead of laboring through Gurney. Owens' poems are five star stuff. I can't recommend him enough.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First World War was definitely the war that should not have happened. How the "leaders" of that time bungled into it ought to serve as a lasting lesson to would-be leaders of every era of how to avoid slipping into a conflict that "everyone" thought would be a minor conflict and "over by Christmas," but which turned out to be a blood-letting of unimaginable proportions!

Moreover, the unjust "peace" imposed by the victors at Versailles in 1919 but set the stage for the social turmoil that led to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany AND the Second World War.

In these first decades of the 21st century we once again see idiots proclaiming the "glory" of military service and the sometimes "necessity" of conflict to "resolve" things. These are the same dolts who not only have mostly never seen combat, but most of them also never served in their armed forces, either!

These poems remind us of the human cost of war, of the misery, suffering, and death of the many "grunts" invisible to the elite in power, but who always bear the burden of conflict.

War NEVER solves anything, but often just sows the seeds that will bear fruit in the next conflict.

As that old song goes, "When will they ever learn?"

Looking at the rise of militancy and violence in the US and elsewhere around the world, I would not hesitate to answer, "NEVER"!

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone knows I'm a WWI girlie. (And even if you don't, it makes sense knowing everything else you know about me, doesn't it?) Most importantly for this book, I adore Wilfred Owen—he's probably my favorite poet period. The collection begins with an outline of the lives of Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen, who all experienced the Great War in different ways, but all of whom wrote some of the best poems of that period. Then there are selected poems from each poet—and I appreciate that the editors put the poets in order of ascending talent (at least in my opinion, and what seems to be scholarly opinion).

I didn't love many of the Gurney poems, but there were several that still stood out. I liked the least pretentious and simplest ones best: "Near Vermand," "The Not-Returning," "Towards Lillards," "The Interview," "On Somme," and "Butchers and Tombs" were all evocative. Then, Rosenberg's melodic wrestling with God and the outrage of war was unique and gripping. But of course I loved the Owen poems best. Find me a poem more vivid than "The Sentry." You can't!

This is a great collection for the period and I wish I could teach a WWI poetry class but alas I'm just a lawyer

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five star because of Wilfred Owen, one of my favourite all-time poets. The notes, criticism, chronologies, introductions, and background are all also excellent. Rosenberg is good, and Gurney I find the weakest for my tastes, but on the flip side I actually gelled with his patriotic pastoral yearning for the Severn Valley and Gloucestershire, because that's where my family is from, and he's not wrong. I just found his verse to be a little more naive than I like on this subject. Owen is a master, as is Siegfried Sassoon, whose hand you can feel, albeit his verse isn't in this anthology.

Highlights-

Anthem For Doomed Youth
The Last Laugh
Dulce Et Decorum Est

In The Trenches

I studied Wilfred Owen's poetry in class during my GCSEs and it made a massive impact on me. It was a tragic joy to revisit these with the notes in the penguin edition and read again that which must never be repeated.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of the work of three poets: Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen. Owen is almost certainly the best known of the three. Rosenberg and Owen were to die in 1918. Gurney lived, but spent a large part of his life, post 1922, in asylums and died in 1937. I have read a letter Gurney wrote to the Metropolitan Police whilst in an asylum and it is one of the most heart breaking things I've ever read.

This collection has a brief introduction and copious notes by Jon Stallworthy and Jane Potter. Both the introduction and the notes are incredibly useful. The ones for Owen's poems are more in-depth, which is a consequence of the time and effort scholars have spent piecing together what he wrote and when.

I hadn't read much Gurney or Rosenberg prior to this collection. I've read much of Owen, particularly his war poetry. However, this collection features poems they wrote before the war and in the case of Gurney afterwards and they are arrayed by date of composition. That allows you to see their work develop. Gurney in particular seems to go on a journey from a sort of Romantic Keatsian style to something much sparer and more modern. Indeed I came out of this collection much impressed with Gurney's work and wanting to know and read more about him. Rosenberg I also liked, but struggled a little more with. I will be revisiting that section most I think.

There's not much to say about Owen that hasn't already been said. I think he is the most poetically gifted of the three, but that makes it sound like a competition but it isn't. I've reviewed a collection of Owen's poetry on here so you can find more details there. Sometimes he finds a phrase or image that hits you like a gold-plated brick. All of them do, to be fair, but Owen seems more consistent.

In the end though I think it is Gurney that will stay with me most after reading this. The later poems feature some heart rending cries for an end to suffering so let me end with a brief quote from 'To God' by Ivor Gurney:

"And I am praying for death, death, death,
And dreadful is the in-drawing and out-breathing of breath,
Because of the intolerable insults put on my whole soul,
Of the soul loathed, loathed, loathed of the soul."

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

The three are Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen. There is a very good introduction, which brings out their very under-privileged backgrounds and their varying attitudes towards religion, and towards the war itself.
Gurney's poems often include a beautiful evocation of his beloved Gloucestershire, and there is an interplay with music at which he was so adept.
Rosenberg's poems were quite a disappointment. Often the emotion seems too shrill, the language passionate but somehow a bit artificial. It is not that the horror and outrage at what he describes is not real and justified, but that he seems to be 'telling' us about it rather than 'showing' it directly.
What this anthology brings out, for me, is that Owen, as a poet, is head and shoulders above the others. His work is so powerful and he uses language to convey his experience and emotions very directly. I love his use of 'pararhyme' which, it is suggested, he invented. He was killed just one week before the end of the war.
I have this week seen a small exhibition of his MSS and other memorabilia at the Bodleian. It was dedicated to Jon Stallworthy, one of the editors of this anthology and a great expert on Owen. It turned out (by a chance remark) that my friend Andrew went to school with Stallworthy (who got Andrew into trouble, flicking pellets at other boys!) and they remained friends until Stallworthy's death in 2014. He was a Professor of English Literature at Oxford, as well as a poet in his own right.

[Jiayuan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult to put a stars rating on a poetry collection like this. More than ever I wish I could put half stars here, would have been 3.5 to satisfy my brain on this one, rounding up to 4. I had previously read (on e-book) "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen" edited by Cecil Day-Lewis which was excellent. I picked up this book to get some of Owen's writings in physical copy, as well as to read from Gurney and Rosenberg for the first time. There's a fair introduction, suggestions for further reading and good notes at the back for each poem. For me, this book does a better job of laying out the poems (in chronological order by each poet) than "The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry" (grouped by theme, and no dates on the poems itself forcing the reader to flip to the end of the anthology to view them) though I acknowledge that these two books have different goals, thus their differing layouts.

Gurney spent time in a hospital / asylum where the latter part of his poems were written. Makes for interesting reading as his poems are ordered in chronological order, and as Hurd (1978) says in the end notes: "the best of [Gurney's] asylum poems [...] make terrible reading ... they sound like the utterings of a man whose mind may perhaps have momentarily lost its balance"

Owen remains the best poet out of the three for me.

[Michael Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love all of the poets in the book. I love their use of imagery, the fact that through their use of poetry, and their use of ancient legends, they are able to portray, the mood, the colour, and the pathos all in single sentences. Thus reading one of their poems can be a complete education in itself.

[Bill Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I don't know why I'm feeling so down this week.

Yes, that's right. I read a book of World War I poetry the same week I read a book on eviction and watched I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

Oh, wait."

[Astrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. Passionate and deeply emotional; visceral portrayal of WW1. My favorite section came at the end (Wilfred Owen), but the whole book was excellent & the preface was thorough. The notes at the end are detailed and very helpful for background & contextual knowledge. Loved it.

[Joshua Emil · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Rating. It captures the vivid experiences of the World War One poets through poetry. Good poetry writing because, I'm not much into poetry. I hope to discover more things like these.