Juliana Pacheco Reading Effie Lee Newsome’s “Morning Light” (1918)

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I chose this poem by Effie Lee Newsome because it did not necessarily talk about the Great War. It is a poem written during the war, but not a poem about the Great War. Another reason I chose this poem was that we did not read as many texts written by African Americans. I was bewildered by this piece of writing. Nature is a central part of this poem, especially in its portrayal of humans. At first, I was confused as to why “dew-driers” were important; much like any poem I read, I think, “Well, what could this possibly mean?” After finishing the poem once, I thought it was just about the connection we humans have with nature; however, re-reading it, I realized that was just the surface. This piece is important to me because it highlights the beauty of nature that surrounds violence. Much of this topic was discussed at the beginning of the semester, based on the texts we have read, about how, even during war and horrible trench warfare, civilians were still trying to come to terms with peace. People were just looking for a break from the violence, often turning to nature. 

Ainsley Graf’s reflection on ‘My Boy Jack’

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I feel strongly toward My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling as I watched the 2007 film of the same name for my Special Missions project. The insight that the film gives to this poem is incredible, and having seen the film really brings out the feelings of worry embedded in this poem. The entire poem feels like an internal back-and-forth between Kipling and Nature itself, where Kipling is questioning Nature as to where his son is. Nature, as gracefully as ever, nudges Kipling toward the reality that he went far out of his way to send his son into a war that he knew full well he was likely not coming back from in the name of patriotism. Kipling is forced to reckon with knowing that he sent his son to his death, and that he must stand by his decision to do so–or else it will destroy him.

The back-and-forth effect felt by the tide and the wind blowing shows the simultaneously uncertain yet cyclical nature of war, and it certainly speaks to the mental anguish that Jack’s parents felt when they were unsure whether he was alive or not. No matter how uncertain Jack’s parents may have felt, the natural world was always there giving them answers. (Jack is not with this tide; Jack is not with this wind blowing.) Kipling never captured what it meant to be a soldier, but that was never his goal. He successfully captured the effects that losing a child in war may take on a parent, and he justified feelings of pain with those of patriotism. 

https://youtube.com/shorts/4x_V-zRRwwk

Noah’s Reading of Wilfred Owen’s [I saw his round mouth’s crimson]

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iWunFsnI3GbIJCHwXjqzlEV6aI5qP6cp/view?usp=drive_link

While searching through the poems in Kendall’s anthology, I was initially determined to pick a poem that we hadn’t read for class, since I didn’t want to risk repeating anything that was said in discussion on the blog or in person. I’d gathered a small list of poems that I felt prepared to analyze, but not many of them were really sticking out to me as much as I wanted them to. On a last minute scroll through Wilfred Owen’s section after I remembered how much his poems had resonated with me, this small, untitled poem caught my eye. I didn’t really want to pick such a short poem, especially not one that we’d already read for class, because it felt like a cop out for the recording part of the project, but the immense level of emotion and detailed imagery packed into its minimal length made it feel so much longer than it really is and was very moving to me. Something about the lamentful, elegy-esque tone of the poem really spoke to me, so I decided to pick this poem to analyze for my project. I’m sorry about how short my recording is, but I hope I can make up for it in my analysis!

Because of the fast-paced and often chaotic nature of the battles that took place throughout the war, not many of the pieces that we’ve read this semester have taken such a slow, personal, and magnified look into just one specific, unnamed soldier’s death. The poem, although it is so short, feels almost as though the narrator has stopped time to admire the dying soldier’s face one last time, taking in and cherishing every last detail of him in life before he slips away forever. Despite the dying soldier featured in the poem remaining completely unnamed and unidentifiable in personality, looks, or anything personal to him, the poem describes his final hour in such intimate and loving detail that completely juxtaposes the lack of personality we know from this soldier in an incredibly touching way. When I was doing some quick research on Owen before my reading questions for his poems, I found out that he was likely gay or queer in some way and may have had affairs with men (possibly including Siegfried Sassoon!). Knowing this about him, I was even more inclined to view this poem in an explicitly homosexual way rather than just immensely homosocial in the way that several of our other readings have been. Despite both the narrator and the dying soldier going unnamed and unknown in the poem, the narrator describes the dying soldier with such passionately mournful detail that it very much reads to me as homoerotic. Line 5 in particular discusses the soldiers’ life leaving the “heavens of his cheek,” a description so intimate and so full of adoration that it seems unlikely for it to simply be the result of a strong platonic bond. Then, of course, the opening line of the poem also focuses on the soldier’s mouth, which is a very intimate place on the body to gaze at with such attention to detail. The fact that the poem is untitled also felt significant to me, in that it almost felt as though Owen chose not to attempt to put this relationship and grief into words because it simply wasn’t possible to. Such intense love and mourning is difficult to describe in just one short title, and leaving the poem untitled actually spoke more loudly about the nature and sheer abundance of this love than titling it would have. The bond between the two men is unspeakable—not only because of the homophobia of the time that would have prevented them from being able to safely be open about it, but also because it is simply too intense to put into words.

Although the trauma of war lives on for a long time—whether that be within the soldiers themselves, the environment that the war took place in, or the soldiers’ loved ones—this poem felt like it ended with something of a proper sense of closure. To me, it felt like the written equivalent of gently cupping a lover’s cheek as they take their dying breath, as the rest of the world fades into the buzz of the background. The war itself was only an unspoken backdrop to this poem, while the dying soldier remained the true focal point. The way that the poem is almost able to completely separate itself from the war gives the narrator time to truly process and mourn his (probable) lover’s death, something that isn’t often possible during war. Many of the readings this semester have featured characters who do not let themselves actually feel anything about the deaths of their loved ones, but this poem stands in contrast to these other stories. While the poem is obviously still tragic, its tenderness and intimacy made it feel like a perfect poem to close the semester off with, something that allowed me to take one final magnified look into all of the deaths and tragedies that we have read throughout the semester and properly process and admire the lives and deaths of each and every casualty of the war that we have read about this semester.

Emily Bailey’s Poetry Project

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I chose “Strawberries” by Wilfrid Gibson for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that I enjoyed reading about a different perspective in comparison to the main novels we’ve analyzed this year. While we have read a plethora of content centering soldiers, both on the home and fighting front, nurses, and regular civilians— there has been none about the physical standpoint of a young mother and wife. A wife who gave birth by herself, living with the knowledge that the father of her child could die, or already be dead, without ever meeting his youngest child. A mother who has been raising two children on her own for years, and working, and working, and working. All while simultaneously going “crazy” for thinking about the philosophy of war in general. For how could he, any solider “against their will,” go fight someone else he has never met and has no specific ill will towards? This poem goes to show how war is not only a hardship for the people in the center of it, but how war has a ripple effect that spreads out upon lands and people that have never seen the same privation. The second reason: As a child who has had a father in war, this poem wormed its way into my heart for the sake of my mother. 

https://www.canva.com/design/DAG6g4Wk2I4/nun_p9TEMb2A-88D8SqXzw/edit?utm_content=DAG6g4Wk2I4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton – audio


Sophia’s reading of Patrick Shaw Stewart’s “I saw a man this morning”

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The Iliad is my favorite of the three great Greco-Roman epics, and deals with the story of Achilles’ blinding anger towards Agamemnon and later Hector. Achilles is a man caught up in a war that swallowed up his entire world, and he has come to fight in it despite having been told by his mother it is foretold he will die if he fights; Achilles dies in the last year of the war, not too long after losing his best friend Patroclus. Stewart wrote this poem before joining the Dardanelles campaign, which happened in the general vicinity of where ancient Troy stood, and the poem addresses Achilles. I grew up with the Greek myths and the Iliad, and the comparisons between both the wars and the soldiers struck me hard.
To me, this poem was a meditation on being engulfed by a war that encompasses your entire world and will most likely kill you. The speaker has not the high ideals of Brooke’s “The Soldier”, nor the horror of “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, nor even the anger of Sassoon’s “The Poet as Hero”, but a resignation to his fate so reminiscent of the Greek and Trojan heroes of the Iliad. Ever since I read this poem at fifteen, the last two stanzas have haunted me with their heart-breaking simplicity.

I’ve chosen to read the poem rather quietly, for it takes place in the quiet before the storm.

Sarah’s Reading of Rosenberg’s “Returning, we hear the larks”

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I chose Rosenberg’s poem “Returning, we hear the larks” for many reasons, but what struck me most was the wartime language permeating a moment that might otherwise read as peaceful. Rosenberg uses words like “ringing,” “showering,” and “dropped” to describe the larks’ song as the soldiers return to their trench—terms we’ve consistently associated with bombs, shells, and destruction throughout the semester. This made me wonder why he frames a brief moment of “beauty” with the language of violence. And as I reread the poem, I began to understand my initial reaction: what first felt hopeful gradually became angry and frustrated, as though I were mocking the larks rather than admiring them. That shift is ultimately what gave the poem new meaning for me: the larks felt less like symbols of solace and more like reminders of what the soldiers can never truly have, their song suggesting a peace the soldiers know is false. This is also why the final line resonated with me so deeply—the comparison to “a serpent” hiding in a young girl’s kiss reveals the soldiers’ awareness that the larks’ music is a kind of deception, offering hope that war immediately takes away.

Reading this poem also felt fitting because it echoes themes that have interested me throughout the semester, especially in Not So Quiet. I was fascinated by Nellie’s accusatory tone toward her mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington, and by the ways gender norms both confine and shape her anger. I’ve come to see her inability to directly condemn the war in her letters as a symptom of the limited agency she both resists and reinforces. This also emerges in Not Only War, where Montie’s entire military experience is shaped and controlled by a white man, despite his efforts to resist it. And even in the end, when he dies while trying to save Bob—a moment that could be read as hopeful—I see Montie losing agency once again, his identity and legacy still tied to privileged groups. I noticed a similar pattern in Rosenberg’s poem too: he accuses the larks of offering false joy but retreats at the end, unable to fully articulate the soldiers’ anger, almost emotionally withdrawing himself.

Ultimately, this poem allowed me to further examine the subtle ways authors reveal a lack of agency. This has always been the theme I’m most drawn to, for I enjoy dissecting what emerges unintentionally, beneath the surface. In Rosenberg’s case, that hidden layer exposes the falseness of hope in wartime, where pain is the constant reality and peace is only ever momentary and often misleading.

https://youtu.be/jlzb1DOmFtM

Dinah’s selection from Mew’s “May, 1914”

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I chose to read May, 1915 by Charlotte Mew because I think it provides an important female perspective of the war and I think it utilizes natural imagery in an interesting way. In the informational blurb about Mew in our poetry anthology, it is mentioned that she was unmarried at the time of the war and all of her brothers had died prior to it. She had no relation to any soldiers, yet the war still had a huge impact on her life. I am glad that her work was chosen for this anthology, because while war narratives typically exclude women anyway, when women are featured in them it is often only because of their personal relationships to soldiers. We may often hear of a poor soldier’s wife, but not of an unmarried, childless woman like Mew. Something we have devoted ourselves to throughout this course is acknowledging that the war affected literally everyone and there are so many important perspectives to be aware of from combatants, non-combatants, and people of different genders, races, and social backgrounds. There is no singular war experience and all may be treated with equal significance. So, I chose Mew’s short, naturalistic poem. References to nature and Mother Earth are familiar to us in works about the Great War, and usually the Earth is depicted as a source of safety and stability. In this poem, I feel like there is some doubt in the stability of nature despite the constant reassurance that spring will come again and that the natural world will heal. If natural healing is a “divine surprise”, there must be some doubt that it will always occur. I get the sense that taking comfort in nature is not quite enough at this point, when the war has upended so much. When looking at a war-torn landscape, it is hard to have faith in Mother Nature. The fact that the title of this poem is a date relatively early in the war is also troubling, because if the poem is about hoping (however futilely) that nature will heal the destruction of war, there are many more destructive years to come before that hope comes to fruition. 

Praematuri Read, Record, Reflect – Elijah Curtis

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mh7fT4n8OuN7dpm1pDYN4Nhd5I2WPn6L/view?usp=sharing

I chose this poem because its primary focus is the aspect of WWI that resonated most with me through this class. All of our texts have dealt with the loss of life, specifically the mass loss of youth through death or trauma. This poem resonated with me especially because it draws back to a topic we’ve discussed many times and rarely agreed on; after being subjected to an indescribably violent and traumatic experience such as participating in the war, is death a mercy or tragedy? I’ve gone back and forth, though I don’t think the answer is as simple as choosing one or the other. I’m no stranger to witnessing violence, but this class has educated me on the extent of depravity that humans are capable of. Every single death is a tragedy, more so when it’s the result of a conflict whose conflicting parties don’t wish to fight each other. However, I still believe that death can be a merciful release from someone’s individual perspective. None of those young people deserved to die, but when someone loses all of their friends and mental stability, I feel it is unfair to force them to continue living a life that has not/may not ever improved. This poem was an appropriate choice for me to finish this semester because it emphasizes the futility and needlessness of the 40 million casualties and up to 20 million deaths of the young men and women who did not deserve to die, but still could have come away wishing they did.

Elizabeth M’s Reading of Charlotte Mew’s “May, 1915”.

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For my reading, I chose Charlotte Mew’s Spring, 1915, found in our Kendall Anthology on page #46. It was the first line that drew me into this poem, specifically the phrase, “Spring will come again”. I was in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in high school, and I played the character Ophelia. For those of you who don’t know, Ophelia loses her mind and, in her last scene in the show, she says this same line. I was unable to find if Mew was directly referencing Shakespeare in this poem, but when I researched into the role in high school, I found that Shakespeare was referencing an old song that was sung during the black death.

Mew uses this poem to point out that the world keeps going. That no matter how horrible things are or have been, there is more. Goodness always returns and God permits peace. It is “Sure of the sky” that there is goodness in the world that comes around, no matter the pain felt in the moment.

I love certainty, as well. I know that there are very few things that one can be sure of, but I think Charlotte Mew did a great job of choosing things that are actually certain.

Maddie’s Selection from Kipling, My boy Jack

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https://youtube.com/shorts/oZl01RS0T_I?si=XLl67NJcPztK0h_U

I chose to interpret “My Boy Jack” by Rudyard Kipling because it was one of the poems that I remembered and kept thinking about after we had already discussed it in class. All Quiet and Not So Quiet were my favorite books this semester because of the focus on the relationship between parent at home and child at war. I thought it was very interesting to see how the relationship changed and evolved due to the trauma and disconnect as well as differing opinions on the war. While the books explored the child’s perspective, this poem explored and expanded on how parents would deal with the guilt of sending their child off to die. I can very much see Nellie’s mother reacting this way if she had died in the war. It was interesting to see another perspective on this issue and explore how a parent may fight against themselves.