Anne Powell
Published: 2014-10-06
Total Pages: 419
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The lives, deaths, poetry, diaries and extracts from letters of sixty-six soldier-poets are brought together in this limited edition of Anne Powell's unique anthology; a fitting commemoration for the centenary of the First World War. These poems are not simply the works of well-known names such as Wilfred Owen – though they are represented – they have been painstakingly collected from a multitude of sources, and the relative obscurity of some of the voices makes the message all the more moving. Moreover, all but five of these soldiers lie within forty-five miles of Arras. Their deaths are described here in chronological order, with an account of each man's last battle. This in itself provides a revealing gradual change in the poetry from early naïve patriotism to despair about the human race and the bitterness of 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.