Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen through the Lives of the Soldier Poets

by Michael Korda

The First World War comes to harrowing life through the intertwined lives of the soldier-poets in Michael Korda’s epic Muse of Fire . With Muse of Fire , Michael Korda, the best-selling author of Alone and Hero , takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war’s unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation―destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England―and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives. In a sweeping narrative that echoes The Guns of August , Korda recounts these four years of a civilization destroying itself and portrays the lives and anguished deaths of the young men who unforgettably illuminated it. As the success of Pat Barker’s Regeneration , the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front and the images of brutal trench warfare in today’s Ukraine demonstrate, contemporary interest in “the war to end war” remains high. 100 illustrations

Genres: History, Poetry, Nonfiction, World War I, War, Biography, Audiobook

416 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 2024

About the author

is an English-born writer and novelist who was editor-in-Chief of Simon & Schuster in New York City.

Reviews

[- ̗̀ jess ̖́- · Rating 4 out of 5]

is this the pinnacle of scholarly rigour, or the most perfectly structured book? no, but i did have a blast reading about rupert brooke’s trainwreck of a love life for five chapters? absolutely.

more thoughts that im gonna turn into sentences when i have time
- i dont even like rupert brooke!
- the mythologizing of owen and sassoon’s craiglockhart meeting
- unnecessary speculation on what could have happened i think takes away from what did
- why focus on mostly english poets but have one american one? what’s the structure in that? tf was the structure in this book
- this book does not have a proper thesis and this read like disconnected biographies — but especially graves, sassoon, and owen are so interconnected with one another. also, their sections felt so rushed?
- other poets: charles sorley, john masefield, wilfrid gibson, edmund blunden, ivor gurney, and julian grenfell are all poets i’d have loved to hear about; as a canadian, i’m gonna have to add john mcrae to that list as well.

[Ditte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining and great intro to the WWI war poets though the author isn't exactly objective. While easy to read, I could've used more references or footnotes for some of the things he claimed.

The pacing of the book was somewhat weird, there was some repitition, and, as others have said, this was basically a Rupert Brooke biography in disguise. The first 35% of the book was devoted to sex pest Brooke who the author seems very fond of.

Still, I had a great time reading this and I learned some about Brooke and Seeger especially.

[Book Club of One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets denotes the biographies and key writings of six English language centered soldier poets while journeying through a chronology of war. Michael Korda shows how the poets came to their craft, joined up and fought in the war and how their writings helped shape or reflect public opinion and a have become a key reference point in our understanding of the First World War.

Korda begins with the prewar, detailing and challenging the popular perception of the idyllic life in Britain through Rupert Brooke's life, with some references to the wider chain of events and tensions. This is largely the pattern for the rest of the book, each chapter details the life of one (or sometimes two) poets following the key events and battles of the war, with some flashbacks to delineate their early lives and development of their writing.

Korda begins with Brooke and then switches to Alan Seeger, the sole non-British Empire poet detailed here. Seeger joined the French Foreign Legion. Third is Isaac Rosenberg. After that we move in to more of a melange between Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen.

While we get a cradle to grave overview of the majority of writers, four of the six were killed in the war (spoiler?). This leaves much to mourn with their potential cut short, only Graves and Sassoon survived the war with the abilities to reflect on their trauma and legacies with age.

Korda does very well detailing their lives, showing the key moments or the development of the creative drive of the poets. He mixes the full history, with biography and literary criticism. His overall concern is with their work and the war, but not just on their own merits, this work shows their relationships between each other, just how close and at times collaborative and supportive these could be. Much as the poetry shows, the experiences at the sharp end of war were dangerous, messy, traumatic and full of the inconsistencies of military life.

As someone who is more widely read of this topic and holds a torch for Ivor Gurney, I was disappointed not to see him included, but for those newer to world war I studies there is a lot of helpful details and explanations that show how poetry was wide reaching and impactful on the wider society, and how these figures battled both military and artistically, and at times their own understanding of themselves and their gender identities.

Malcolm Hillgartner's narration is very well done, especially when he adjusts his cadence to better emphasize the poet's work.

Recommended to those exploring war writings, newer to world war I studies or the popular reception to poetry and it's effects on society.

I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Korda is 90 years old and still churning out top quality nonfiction. Before World War I poets were rock stars. Korda covers the big names. I'd heard of many of them but had only read one- Owen. Four chapters are on Rupert Brooke who didn't even die in combat. Absolutely TMI on this pretty boy, mama's boy, and the influencer of the time. Korda then goes on with Alan Seeger and Isaac Rosenberg, neither of whom was familiar to me. Then Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen. The Big Three IMHO. Korda sheds light on sexual orientation, their reaction to the war, and their embrace of duty to King and country. Surprisingly, no mention of Joyce Kilmer, an American Catholic killed at the Marne while working for Wild Bill Donovan. He's best known for his 1913 poem Trees. I would have liked to have read more about the post war careers of those poets who survived the carnage.

[nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

feels weird to rate a nonfiction book, but man. the author annoyed me. it's a old white man book for old white men. i wish there was more examples of the actual poetry in this book about poets??? or talked more about how poetry was massively influential on popular culture during this time in a way it never was after? it's touched on but never fully in depth- sad bc thats genuinely interesting to me.
there really wasn't a thesis to this book lol, it was just more like a crash course biography on a few different guys. anyway i learned a lot, it served as a good intro to the topic, i have brain worms

[Peter McGough · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book. A thoughtful biography of the key poets of WW1, giving insights into where each of them drew from. The poetry remains breathtaking. At the end, the author reminds us that WW1 remains very relevant in the wars in Ukraine & the Middle East. The poets still have much to tell us…

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The First World War set the table for the 20th century: cruel, stupid, and pointless, with the cavalry charge and dreams of glory replaced by mechanized warfare and widespread slaughter and destruction. Those lucky enough to survive it witnessed the outbreak of another, even more devastating conflict a mere twenty years after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and we have lived in the shadow of both conflicts ever since. Artists of many different mediums have tried to come to terms with what happened in the years between the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the eleventh hour of November 11, 1918, but perhaps no group captured the waste and horror better than the war poets, primarily British, who wrote about the Western Front and its endless trench system.

"Muse of Fire," by Michael Korda, captures the lives of six of the most well-known soldier poets, from Rupert Brooke to Wilfred Owen. He documents how each man saw the conflict, how each one wrote about it, and what effect it had on them whether they survived it or not. I enjoyed the profiles of those I was already familiar with either through their work or through previous biographical works ("The Great War and Modern Myth" covers a lot of similar details), but I found the chapters devoted to more obscure poets to be revelatory.

Korda begins with the outbreak of the war and the optimism that fueled Britain's plans to liberate Belgium and to come to the aid of their French and Russian allies. Rupert Brooke, the first of the poets profiled, also dies first, after seeing barely any action and untainted by the sort of grief and despair of the trenches (he died from an infection while en route to what would become the slaughter-house that was the seige of Gallipoli). Brooke's pre-war career captures the wayward idleness of upper- to middle-class British male life, from wilderness retreats to odd jobs and ambiguous sexuality coupled with a rather immature nature and an inability to escape the confines of reliance on parents. Brooke changes when the war breaks out not long after his birthday, and he enlists in an elite unit. But his poetry will be outdated long before the grass grows on his grave, because of the changing nature of warfare itself.

Korda next shows us the brief career of Alan Seeger (uncle to the future folk singer Pete, though he died well before his nephew's birth), whose poetry also reflects a naive notion of the glory of war. Our first realist poet of the battlefield comes with Isaac Rosenberg, a British Jew who had to tolerate condescension from his peers, as well as Siegfried Sassoon, whose principled stand against the war earned him a trip to a sort of Freudian rest home for soldiers suffering from "shell shock." We also see the rise of Robert Graves, later best known for "I, Claudius," and finally end on the short but brilliant career and life of Owen, perhaps the best-known (and best) of the war poets, who died mere days before the Armistice.

Throughout the book, Korda includes examples from each man's work to show the gradual shift from the patriotic verse of the early days to the bitter, angry poems that came out of the horrors of artillery assaults and inglorious battles with no clear winner. The war became a slog, with neither side willing to negotiate an end, and countless young men making up the butcher's bill for years and years. Korda shows how the war affected each man, and how their poetry survived them and formed our major way of understanding the true horrors of World War One. This is a testament to the youth who went off to war and came back scarred, if they came back at all. As a work of biography and literary analysis, "Muse of Fire" works as a way of commemorating those who wrote about the war in a way that few have before and since, and doing so in a way that makes it impossible to see any war as anything short of a waste of life. And if we would only learn that lesson from the poets immortalized here, think how much better our world would be.

[Madison Houghton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this completely gripping. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but this enthralled me. I read it on my commute to and from work, and it was always annoying whenever my train pulled into my station because all I wanted to do was keep reading.

In American history, WWI often gets overshadowed by WW2. For whatever reason (and I can think of a few but this isn’t the time or place to get into a discussion of the American industrial military complex). As a result I’ve never been as familiar with WWI history. I am, however, a big lover of poetry. And this books caught my eye, because while I wasn’t particularly enthralled by the idea of WWI was I was enthralled by the idea of soldier poets.

You may be asking yourself, what does poetry have to do with a world war? Well. Quite a lot in fact. One of the foundational principles of this book is that the some of the main evidence we have of the conditions and realities of the war comes from these soldier poets. In a time where the narrative was tightly controlled by govt propaganda, the only anti-war sentiment allowed to survive was poetry.

This was a different world, a world where a gentleman was encouraged to pursue the arts, studied the Greco-Roman classics, where poetry and art and music were considered a gentlemanly occupation. Hot in the heels of Byron, and Shelley, Walter Scott and William Blake, poetry was considered a much more elevated medium than it is today.

And for that reason, these WWI poets are so crucial to shaping of the narrative of the war.

The author splits the book into several mini biographies of the greats (Brook, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Seeger etc), narrating their lives and highlighting key works. All in the context of the enormous blood loss and tragedy that was the First World War.

Personally, I think we spend a little too much time with Brook and not enough with the other poets. I would also have liked even more poetry, and poetical analysis. But those qualms aside, I thought it was a true pleasure to read. Maybe my fav read of the year? Good way to close out 2025.

Would recommend to history buffs, poetry lovers, and English majors.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was disappointing. One third of this book was about Rupert Brooke and nearly one hundred pages about his pre war life. Nearly 2/3 of the book was about lessed know war poets. It is not until 200 pages into the book that either Graves, Sassoon, or Owen is mentioned.

The organization of organizing by poet rather than discussing the war and including all the poets made the book tedious at times. I would recommend Robert Graves Goodbye to All That rather than this book.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

breaks my damn heart. idk exactly why the author chose to order the poets like this, but it was hilarious that he included so much of Rupert Brooke’s disastrous love life. I loved getting a full biography of each poet’s upbringing and what led them to the war, and I feel like I knew a lot of the Graves-Sassoon-Owen section, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a fantastic time reading it. I can see a lot of their lives in the fiction I’ve read, which is always cool to me. also liked that the author didn’t shy away from the fact that a lot of these guys were into men even though some of the evidence of that was censored and destroyed. I do wish we had spent some more time on the post-war reception of the poets and how Graves and Sassoon continued on, and I will be learning more about Seeger and Rosenberg. love how apparently being a 24 year old failing writer working a shitty editorial job and pining to go abroad is enduring. and Wilfred, I think of you always.

[Michelle Raybourn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really been enjoying learning history lately through specific lenses!

I love all the side quests and little love stories

And it makes me realize how much happened because of World War 1…just how we are still seeing political reactions from all the way back then. Gave me lots to think about!

[Brett Glasscock · Rating 3 out of 5]

not terribly well organized. love how they were all gay tho

[Rin · Rating 4 out of 5]

really fascinating companion/follow-up read to alice winns In Memoriam - war, man! what a fucking awful nightmare meat grinder

[Paul Womack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fine introduction to poets of the first world war, but so terribly sad.

[Susan Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry written by the soldier poets of WWI is haunting & searing. This tells the story of some of those poets.

[Rick Elinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could feel the horror of World War I through Korda's examination of 6 of the poets, famous for their war writings. My rating is only 3 stars through no fault of Korda. I could only stand to read about Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wifred Owen, all of whom expressed the terror and lack of glory of war. The book starts, however, with a lengthy discussion of Rupert Brooke and the attitudes and positions of the English aristocracy. It made me queasy to hear of these English class distinctions, and I stopped reading many of these early chapters.

Both the landed gentry and the men from the middle and lower classes ended up dying in large numbers but in very different ways. The enlisted men died in muddy trenches and suffered from gas attacks. The rich, landed men, having been educated at posh public schools, assumed command positions on entering the armed forces. They were accompanied by a man-servant who took care of them and polished their buckles and shoes and often had others to make their bed. Representative of this group, Brooke glories in the idea of war and of dying a patriotic death. The posh group died in large numbers because often in a show of bravado, they led their men from the front with only a pistol and a club.

The numbers of deaths and casualities from World War I is horrific. If any good came out of it, it was the weakening and breaking up of the European aristocracy and the worst of the class distinctions.

[Mark Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have long been interested in the First World War and the lives, and deaths, of the poets who fought in it. Muse of Fire is a welcome addition to the literature on the subject including such works as The Great War in Modern Memory; Julian Grenfell; Goodbye to All That. Author Michael Korda has meticulously researched and for the most part judiciously crafted detailed profiles of six soldier poets, five English and one American (Alan Seeger, Pete Seeger's uncle). My only quibble with the book is that nearly a third of the text is devoted to a detailed biography of Rupert Brooke, whose first hand experience of the war was minuscule (he died of an infected bug bite in 1915) and whose perspective on what the war entailed was largely imaginative. Mr. Korda is an accomplished stylist and a joy to read.
As ever, why government and military leaders perpetuated this slaughter and destruction and how the soldiers persevered through four years of unimaginable horror remain questions unanswered.

[Mike Kanner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this on a whim because the World War 1 context appealed to my interest in that conflict. I was familiar with three of the poets (Sassoon, Graves, and Owen) but had not heard of the others. The six poets he selected to discuss are major; however, the order he presents them in fits a broader theme of how public perception and feelings about the war evolved over the duration of the war.

Korda does an impressive job blending literary history, criticism, and his analysis of the war. He does not get bogged down in any particular aspect, although I thought the chapters on Brooke were a bit long. Each poet's life is retold along with a presentation of the context. Korda's insights are based on a prodigious knowledge of social history as well as personal anecdotes and stories of his famous family.

This was much more enjoyable than I thought it would be and I have bought collections of two of the poets (Seeger and Rosenberg) based on the introduction in this book.

[M B · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author writes with a perceived predetermined bias towards the poets. Cherry picking which historical documents to utilize assists the narrative sought.

[Lisa of Hopewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to #Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this audio book in exchange for an honest review.

My Interest

The Edwardian Era is one of my favorites and World War I was the true end of it. I’ve read tons on the war and some on the poets. My favorite of the Anne of Green Gables books is Rilla of Ingleside in which Anne and Gilbert’s second son, Walter, becomes one of the war poets. Another favorite is Lord of the Nutcracker Men in which a sensitive, artistic father carves wooden nutcracker figures for his son and they come to look more and more scary as the war goes on–just like the poets’ poems do in real life.
The Poets, Their Stories, and My Thoughts

The Six War Poets:

[photos at the end of this post]

Rupert Brooke
Alan Seeger
Isaac Rosenberg
Robert Graves
Siegfried Sassoon
Wilfred Owen

The book opens with the most salacious details of Rupert Brook’s life. Did we need to read a dirty letter her wrote a girl? No. But it used the word c–t to describe her private parts so, naturally, in today’s world we had to be treated to it. This was when I nearly DNF-ed the whole book. All we learned about Rupert was that he wanted sex with a lot of girls related to Lawrence Olivier who were educated at Bedales (the school Princess Margaret’s children later attended) where boys and girls swam naked together (I’m pretty sure that ended before World War II). Other than that we learn that Rupert was a huge celebrity in his day.

Thankfully, the book got more interesting after pretty-boy Brooke. I’d never heard of Isaac Rosenberg, but he was fascinating. He managed to get the artistic education he wanted even though his class and religion got him put in vocational school. Nor had I heard of Alan Seeger, nephew of folk singer and song writer, Pete Seeger (“If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn, Turn, Turn” among others).

The others I knew more about (I knew other facts about Brooke). I’ve read and reviewed Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, and have Robert Graves’ I, Claudius but still haven’t read it. Like Rosenberg and Seeger (the Foreign Legion!!) their lives were more interesting than Brooke’s mostly incel life by far.

Brooke (Rugby), Graves (Charterhouse) and Sassoon (Marlborough–of Catherine, Pippa, and James Middleton fame) were typical privileged upper middle to upper class young men. Sent away to school at about age 8, then on to a great public (private) school before finally heading and Oxford or Cambridge, all expected to be able to do what they enjoyed, but all served in the war by their own choice. None of these young men except Brook was “sporty” or made in the style of a military man. Such young men were slaughtered on a scale never seen before or since. A Subaltern (2nd Lieutenant) had a life expectancy of 6 weeks at the front. That they somehow managed to continue to write poetry is amazing. Like the prose of Ernie Pyle in the next war, the poems of these men–most of which became known after the war–educated the world in the reality of their war.

Like too much of history publishing today, this book skimmed the surface. In part that was due to their age at the time of the war. In part because deeper, longer, books don’t sell any more. Yet the author made comments about their appearance or other silly things and often used hyperbole about this or that being “the most beautiful in England” or “best known verses in the English….” Ugh. Graves went on to have a tremendous career as a writer. I, Claudius even became a major tv production. Brooke is well known due to his association with Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. Rosenberg and Seeger are nearly forgotten. While this book will give them a few new minutes of renewed fame, the salacious look at Brooke’s life will turn off not only me. This is a “history-lite” book only.
My Verdict
3.0

Muse of Fire… by Michael Korda

I listened to the audio version of this book.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the many aspects of World War I that seem remarkable to readers a century later, one is especially unusual, the ascendancy of the soldier poets of England. Never before and never again would the writings of poets fighting for their country gain the immediate attention of a country. As Michael Korda explains in his excellent “Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets,” “poetry mattered to people in a way it no longer does” coming at a time “when there was still a substantial readership for poetry.” It’s not just that there weren’t the distractions of cell phones, the Internet, video games or even television, though that certainly is true. Poetry had “a place in popular culture.” In that regarded atmosphere, came an unusual mix of factors. The war quickly and shockingly had heavy casualties due in part to the introduction of mass weapons of destruction. But with heavy censorship of letters and journalists, the “one thing that was not censored or repressed was poetry.” And it was from poetry that the British public could get an unvarnished feel for the horrors and insanity of trench warfare from the soldier’s point of view, not propaganda machines.
Korda follows the lives of six of these soldiers—Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen—as he deftly explains the war’s trajectory. When the war began, the early poetry of Rupert Brooke reflected the optimism of a country that assumed the war would be brief. Brooke’s good looks made him an instant celebrity and all the more heartbreaking to his countrymen when he died before actual battle near Gallipoli. As other poets joined the war effort, their poetry better reflected the true catastrophe at hand. Sassoon in particular was angered by “all those on his own side whose feet were not in the mud of a trench—the generals, the staff officers, the press, the politicians, even the general public, all of whom applauded the front-line soldiers without any real understanding of the horror, misery and pain they suffered, or the sheet pointlessness of their deaths.” (Sassoon’s story of dissent and treatment for shell shock were fictionalized by Pat Barker in her outstanding Regeneration trilogy as well as in the films “Regeneration” and “Benediction.”) Sassoon would develop a close relationship with Wilfred Owen. Owen tragically was killed in combat days before the war’s end.
Korda’s research combs the extensive correspondence of each man and brings their daily lives in and out of combat to life. His fine work pays fitting testimony to the remarkable lives and creativity of these six men, who gave us a unique perspective on the tragedy of World War I. Recommended.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Korda’s “Muse of Fire” offers a poignant exploration of World War I through the lens of its soldier poets, weaving biography, history, and literary analysis into a narrative that captures the war’s transformation from idealistic crusade to mechanized slaughter. By tracing the lives of Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and others, Korda reveals how their poetry evolved alongside the conflict’s escalating horrors—from Brooke’s early romanticism (“If I should die, think only this of me”) to Owen’s searing indictments (“Dulce et Decorum Est”). This thematic arc mirrors the broader disillusionment of a generation, as the “war to end war” devolved into a futile stalemate that claimed over 25 million lives. Korda’s strength lies in his vivid portrayal of trench warfare’s brutality and the poets’ camaraderie, drawing on military history and personal anecdotes to humanize figures like Isaac Rosenberg, a working-class Jewish painter-turned-soldier, and Alan Seeger, an American volunteer whose ode to “rendezvous with death” foreshadowed his own demise. However, the book’s early focus on Brooke’s prewar romantic entanglements and travels—while richly detailed—risks overshadowing the poets who grappled more directly with the war’s grim realities. Critics also note Korda’s occasional diversion into gossip about his subjects’ private lives, which adds color but little depth to their literary legacies. Despite these quibbles, “Muse of Fire” excels in contextualizing the poets’ work within the Edwardian social fabric and the war’s geopolitical chaos. Korda, a seasoned historian and former Simon & Schuster editor, deftly contrasts the privileged backgrounds of Brooke and Sassoon with Rosenberg’s struggles against poverty and antisemitism, underscoring how class and identity shaped their wartime experiences. The inclusion of poems and draft revisions highlights their artistic growth, particularly Owen’s shift toward unflinching realism. Ultimately, Korda’s narrative serves as both tribute and cautionary tale, reminding readers that the “war poets” were not mere observers but participants in a catastrophe that reshaped modern consciousness. As artillery echoes in contemporary conflicts, their verses remain a haunting testament to war’s human cost.

[Brian Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Homer down to Khaled Husseini, writers have been fascinated by the very human tragedy of war set against the massive scale of the carnage inflicted on the human psyche. Michael Korda very wisely writes a powerful survey of the English soldier poets - young graduates from world class universities - who turned to their journals on the fields of France and Belgium to document their experiences through their passion for poetry.

In World War I, a number of British soldiers all found their poetic skills therapeutic in the lull between fighting. Writing from trenches and bunkers, they composed poems forged in the crucible of that day's fighting. They wrote of they felt and experienced that day. including the terror of imminent death and the witnessing of the deaths of other, sometimes their friends. Their poetry reads cinematically until one recalls they witnessed the real thing Perhaps more than any other war, World War I combined the most horrific casualties (gas asphyxiation, dismemberment, barbed war damage, hanging limbs, exposed interior organs, grotesque expressions, and shell shock to name just a few) with the photographic memory that had now become ingrained in the human pysche due to the invention of the camera. Soldier poets such as Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen synthesized their experience with their own poetic sensibilities to leave us indelible sensory images of the horrors they faced in the trenches and beyond.

It's a little like watching "Schindler's List". It's hard to watch but it's vital to the human experience because it happened. To avoid this type of slaughter again, we must look it full in the eye and refuse to go back to that place again. Ultimately, that's what these soldier poets are urging us to do by sharing their experience: don't let this happen again. Vital reading to understanding modernism and WWI's impact on it.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen through the Lives of the Soldier Poets by Michael Korda begins with many pages focused on Rupert Brooke. This is unfortunate. We read about a timid, mother-oriented Adonis in too much quivering detail, a guy who fell in love with unattainable women in many cases but kept the flame burning for years. He turned out flowing, vapid poems that became a big hit and then didn't really make it into the fighting.

I almost put the book down when I was done with Brooke. Glad I didn't. Korda definitely isn't, as he admits, a literary critic. He often celebrates odd lines. But he is an excellent military historian and he situates several poets, notably Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, in the horrific trench warfare of WWI and links their excellent poetry, which became increasingly raw and realistic, to the tragic realities of deaths by the tens and hundreds of thousands.

Two key turns made the poetry memorable: 1) abandoning allegiance to the romantic strain in English poetry, i.e. Keats; 2) writing in what could be called plain style--blunt, concrete, succinct lines leavened at times by bitter, satirical reprises English cliches that were wholly inappropriate vis-a-vis the horrors of the war.

There is a plaque in Westminster Abbey listing the WWI poets. Not all but many of them definitely earned their place in both literature and history.

[Desirae · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 25% of this book is an overly-long and rambling coming-of-age story about Rupert Brooke. As a coming-of-age story, those 80 pages are marred by pop 1960's-style Freudian analyses of Brooke's problems with his mother, his sexual failures, his general angst, and so on. As the author speculates on whether or not Brooke “consummated” his love for this or that romantic pursuit, the reader is left wondering, “who cares?” Most who knew Brooke were completely enchanted by his charismatic sexuality, and apparently, the effect is also strong vicariously over 100 years after his death. For a more mature commentary on Brooke's shortened life, as well as full text of many of the letters excerpted in this book, I recommend "The Letters of Rupert Brooke", edited by Geoffrey Keynes. The last 20 pages of Korda’s 121-page paean to Brooke provide a more straightforward coverage of "World War I as Seen Through" Brooke's life, if ever so briefly. The last two-thirds of the book covers the other major War Poets, Seeger, Rosenberg, Graves, Sasson, and Owen, and how "World War I [was] Seen Through [their] Lives" in a more-or-less interesting and informative manner. Even in their lives, however, the author frequently invokes the specter of Brooke's sexuality or speculates on just how homosexual these men were. Again, the reader wonders “who cares” about these preoccupations of the author.

[Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
A really interesting synthesis of a history of World War I through short biographies of the most famous of the English-language war poets: Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owens (and Robert Graves as he affected the last two - his is the shortest portrait, perhaps a minor vignette). What I liked best was the inclusion of several of the poems themselves as they highlighted what the poets were experiencing. Even more interesting from a literary standpoint were those instances where drafts and final poems were compared and discussed.
This is not a story new to me (I have dived deep into both the poetry and the horrific history of that war in the past), but it was a very fine compression into one volume, telling a cohesive story in an easily read text. Usefully, Korda does not shy from the ugly realities of how Edwardian society affected the men whose poems we still celebrate - the nastiness of the class system, the unconscious use of privilege, and so on. Rosenberg, a poverty-stricken Jew with enormous gifts compared to golden-boy Brooke, for example (I came away from this book having conceived a startling dislike of Brooke as a person).
Recommended for its brevity and clarity.

[L · Rating 1 out of 5]

My first DNF of the year, sadly. I was very excited to read this because English WWI poetry is one of my special interests, but I simply do not have the willpower to slog through any more of Rupert Brooke's biography. It takes up the first 120 pages of the book and by chapter 3, hasn't even gotten to the war yet. I would love to know why 4 chapters are devoted to him while Sassoon and Owen only get one each, though I admit I'm biased, since Brooke (and any of the more chauvinist-leaning poets) don't interest me nearly as much as the poets who shared their anger, sarcasm, despair, and disapproval of the war. Also, considering these 3 chapters (so far) have basically been 'he was really hot but had no game whatsoever' over and over and over, I cannot for the life of me figure out where the author is going with this and I no longer care enough to find out. If this truly is 'WWI through the eyes of the poets', then for goodness sake let's talk about WWI. Obviously Brooke's background and upbringing influences his interpretation of the war, but that background could be summarized in a chapter at most, especially considering how repetitive it is.

[Gil · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's mind boggling that, just a little over a hundred years ago, poetry held such a grasp on culture. What's more, that it could invoke such fire, such descriptions, and weave a tale as bloody and pointless as World War I. Korda's work, looking at World War I through the lens of its poets and their work, its a fascinating lens in which to view the war. As Korda is quick to point out at the start, he views these poets through the lens of their lives and how that work intersects with it, not literary analysis (although that does come up). It's a engaging and in-depth work, giving a neat overview for those interested in WWI. I will say at points the book is uneven, as the first poet mentioned has far more words split on his behalf than other poets, but that is because of simple information logistics: some poets left behind more personal work and writings to go off of. Nonetheless, I still highly recommend this work to those interested in a more unique lens on WWI.

[Lisa Dornell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and well-researched book about the lives and work of the war poets. Represented here are some very familiar names (Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen), as well as two I was less familiar with (Alan Seeger and Isaac Rosenberg).
The lives of each are explored, starting with childhood, including sections on family relationships, education, family wealth or poverty, and how they first became poets. There is some overlapping in chapters as several of these men knew each other or had friends in common. Two met when they were both patients at a hospital for shell-shock.

The chapters include snippets of each poet's work, which is examined in light of their experiences as the front. Some poets never lost their "war is glorious" tone, others were brutal and vivid in their attempt to show outsiders what life was like in the trenches.

Having read this, I now want to seek out my poetry books and reread these talented men.

[Jim Bogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a study of five major British war poets of WWI - Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen - and one American, Alan Seeger. Brooke was happy to go to war, the blonde hero/rock star. He was also the first to die, tho not in battle.
Seeger was also an enthusiastic volunteer, and stayed surprisingly upbeat, even though his most famous poem is “I have a rendezvous with death”.
The other four spent more time in the trenches, and wrote about its horrors. Owen and Rosenberg were both killed in battle, Owen only a week before the war ended. Graves and Sassoon survived and went on to fame and fortune.
Korda obviously cares about his subjects, and has researched them thoroughly. He also clearly likes them (except maybe Graves) and admires their work..