To the War Poets

by John Greening

In a sequence of verse letters, John Greening sends dispatches across the decades, looking back over the century since the outbreak of the First World War. He addresses the war poets directly, making connections yet always aware of distance, and explores “Englishness,” but also—in his translations from Heym, Trakl, Stadler, and Stramm—provides an alternative perspective. From the discovery of the Sutton Hoo burial just before the start of the Second World War to the security forces’ shut-down of Heathrow airport in 2006, the presence or threat of conflict underlies Greening’s precise, unsentimental address on the centenary of the Great War.

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

John Greening is an English poet, playwright, and critic. He studied at the universities of Swansea, Mannheim and Exeter and has won several major honours, including an Arvon Prize, the Bridport Prize, a Cholmondeley Award, a Hawthornden Fellowship and a Scottish Arts Council Award. He has written numerous poetry collections and plays.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been one of my favourite books of 2014 and one which has repaid repeated readings.

I did review it for Avatar Review in the summer

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Greening’s is a brief, thoughtful anthology of poems, mostly his but a few translations. The first four poems and three other poems near the collection’s end are translations from four German poets of the Great War—Georg Heym, Georg Trakl, Ernst Stadler, and August Stramm. In between the two mini-sets of translations are about 15 poems that have at the start of the title “To,” directly addressing specific poets of the First World War generation. Unlike the British poets, perhaps Greening felt the work of the German poets needed an introduction to his audience, so the translations. Then among these, and briefly after, there are other poems that are thematically linked to them, some directly responding to war monuments, tourist sites, etc., others less directly responsive but focused on memory, art and meaning.

Published in the UK in 2013 on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the First World War, To the War Poets has not yet been published in the US but one hopes it will soon because as much a commemoration as it is, it is nonetheless a work of art that demands attention regardless of anniversary.

To Isaac Rosenberg
The white cliffs are like all the paper they could not have—
the men who were not rich enough to be officers—
and that steady grey horizon is a never-ending pencil lead.

The channel is shifting with misty shapes of things that were said
but never written, for lack of paper, for want of pencils,
and beneath it currents and sands of what they really meant.

And those white mists return near the end of this slender, splendid volume.

Kentish
I have stood here before
and still do in a home
movie stored somewhere
up in our bedroom.

Waves approach in lines
from Shakespeare to Keats:
their grey bulks, thins
and sears, then beats

against the harbor—
smearing words
from the greenboard
into chalk novas—

and cappuccinos
the 4:30 cars
and the couple who’ve seen
a ghost ferry pass

through a channel of mist
where turbine surveillance
keeps turning like lost
reels from old silents.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, this is probably a 2.5 star book for me. I've only read a few of the war poets Greening addresses, and judging by my response to those few, I would've had a better time if I had the same encyclopedic knowledge he appears to have.