To The War Poets by John Greening
Published by Carcanet Press
Reviewed by Denis Joe December 2014
“Something occurred in 1914 that makes it very challenging to grasp the century to come.”
Frank Furedi
“. . . the war’s going on still . . .”
To Edmund Blunden
We can easily find the theme of World War One in plenty of art forms: film and novels are two obvious examples. The theme tells us a straight forward story (All Quiet on the Western Front). We will have a clear idea of what is being conveyed to us. But poetry is different. Things are not as clear cut and we are made to suspend our conception of reality and meaning when we engage with a poem. Or at least that is how a poem should work. Even the poetry of Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg, etc., is not as straight forward as it may appear. Though we can assume that those great men were trying to convey the everyday living of war, we can never be certain. One could just as well see the war as a metaphor for the latest stage of capitalism at that time: Mass war; mass production. In the same manner that the worker became a part of the mechanics of the factory the soldiers became a part of the machinery of war.