Wilfred Owen War Poems Thread

[AmericanBeauty]

Is anyone here doing Wilfred Owen's War poems? I thought it would be cool to have a place to share interpretations and ideas of poems, and share what poems are good for what themes and more.

I'm masterful at Dulce et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth, At a Calvary Near the Ancre, S.I.W, Strange Meeting and I think that is it.

[Paulrus]

hey, another person doing owen! 
in class we studied anthem for doomed youth, the letter, dulce et decorum est, the dead-beat, strange meeting, futility, s.i.w, the last laugh, mental cases, the parable of the old man and the young, disabled, smile smile smile, and spring offensive. (i don't remember the majority of those very well though haha). on my own thought i've had a liiittle bit of a look at wild with all regrets, the next war and exposure.

wild with all regrets is a really good one to look at actually. it's only an unfinished fragment but it's pretty interesting - the end of it is basically a love poem dedicated to sigfried sassoon. it shows how owen's poetry concerns itself with social inequalities even outside of war, and i think you could argue that in a sense, war acts as a macrocosm of owen's personal struggle against societal conventions due to his sexuality and the parochial mindsets held by many at the time. the structure owen uses is strange as well - the poem uses an imperfect form of iambic pentameter where some lines constitute more than 10 syllables. in a way that can represent owen's deviation from or distaste towards the traditional values of the period, shown as he rejects the traditional conventions of poetry.

actually speaking of structure, you can get a loooot of milage out of the way he shatters iambic pentameter. my favourite is in dulce et decorum est. if he used a fully traditional structure, it'd be incongruous with the core message of the poem. but by using a shattered form of it, he's able to distort those traditional 'verities' from within untraditional form. it kinda represents the tearing down of those established thought structures, that it's "sweet and decorous to die for ones country", and seditiously calls for change in the way people perceive war.

at least that's the way i see it haha. what do you reckon? i reckon it'd be good to challenge people's views of poems haha.
also is 'at a calvary near the ancre' worth studying? what are some core themes/nice interpretations you've gotten out of it?

[AmericanBeauty]

hey, another person doing owen! 
in class we studied anthem for doomed youth, the letter, dulce et decorum est, the dead-beat, strange meeting, futility, s.i.w, the last laugh, mental cases, the parable of the old man and the young, disabled, smile smile smile, and spring offensive. (i don't remember the majority of those very well though haha). on my own thought i've had a liiittle bit of a look at wild with all regrets, the next war and exposure.

wild with all regrets is a really good one to look at actually. it's only an unfinished fragment but it's pretty interesting - the end of it is basically a love poem dedicated to sigfried sassoon. it shows how owen's poetry concerns itself with social inequalities even outside of war, and i think you could argue that in a sense, war acts as a macrocosm of owen's personal struggle against societal conventions due to his sexuality and the parochial mindsets held by many at the time. the structure owen uses is strange as well - the poem uses an imperfect form of iambic pentameter where some lines constitute more than 10 syllables. in a way that can represent owen's deviation from or distaste towards the traditional values of the period, shown as he rejects the traditional conventions of poetry.

actually speaking of structure, you can get a loooot of milage out of the way he shatters iambic pentameter. my favourite is in dulce et decorum est. if he used a fully traditional structure, it'd be incongruous with the core message of the poem. but by using a shattered form of it, he's able to distort those traditional 'verities' from within untraditional form. it kinda represents the tearing down of those established thought structures, that it's "sweet and decorous to die for ones country", and seditiously calls for change in the way people perceive war.

at least that's the way i see it haha. what do you reckon? i reckon it'd be good to challenge people's views of poems haha.
also is 'at a calvary near the ancre' worth studying? what are some core themes/nice interpretations you've gotten out of it?

I also did all of those poems except for spring offensive, wild with all regrets (which sounds great, will do it) and the next war.

Some of the poems are absolutely fantastic just for a few small things, it can add in some disambiguation into your essay. If you are talking about like the disorder and chaos of war, you can speak quite literally throughout the essay and add in some of your own interpretations, like how red lips represent life and love between man and woman, but  'red lips are red no more' showcases this absence of love. This is why I know a few poems pretty well (or at least I did, yet to revise) and a few more poems just to touch base on.

The iambic pentameter is something that didn't click with me. Isn't that where there are meant to be ten or so syllables per sentence, and each second or so syllable is meant to be harsher than the one prior? Something along those lines ... I never understood it. In Strange Meeting there isn't exactly a iambic pentameter, but there is an unconventional set of rhyming couplets all throughout if you want to give it a read which apparently reflects the inversion and strangeness of the meeting, as well as the commonality between friend and foe. My previous essay for Owen I simply just wrote on techniques and 'looked closer' at smaller things and got 27/30; was told I would have gotten 30 if my last paragraph wasn't so shit compared to the other two. For some reason I don't really like writing on the rhyming structure; I personally don't think it adds a whole lot of depth, and it takes quite a lot of explaining to do throughout the essay. But the way you described the whole iambic pentameter sounds great, it is just a way of condemning the war once again.

At a Calvary Near the Ancre is pretty good. The core theme that is utilised is bibliomancy, which aims to highlight the little indifference between Jesus on the crucifixion being abandoned by his fellow disciples, to the soldiers being abandoned by the priests of the war. While it doesn't actually specify any of this, the poem is clearly open for interpretation as the poem isn't actually set in the context of war; the technique almost acts as a form of disambiguation to reveal the truths of the poem.

Have you got Skype? I think it'd be pretty handy if we swapped notes and saw each others interpretations because we could double up on our writing and get more quality!

[Paulrus]

I also did all of those poems except for spring offensive, wild with all regrets (which sounds great, will do it) and the next war.

Some of the poems are absolutely fantastic just for a few small things, it can add in some disambiguation into your essay. If you are talking about like the disorder and chaos of war, you can speak quite literally throughout the essay and add in some of your own interpretations, like how red lips represent life and love between man and woman, but  'red lips are red no more' showcases this absence of love. This is why I know a few poems pretty well (or at least I did, yet to revise) and a few more poems just to touch base on.

The iambic pentameter is something that didn't click with me. Isn't that where there are meant to be ten or so syllables per sentence, and each second or so syllable is meant to be harsher than the one prior? Something along those lines ... I never understood it. In Strange Meeting there isn't exactly a iambic pentameter, but there is an unconventional set of rhyming couplets all throughout if you want to give it a read which apparently reflects the inversion and strangeness of the meeting, as well as the commonality between friend and foe. My previous essay for Owen I simply just wrote on techniques and 'looked closer' at smaller things and got 27/30; was told I would have gotten 30 if my last paragraph wasn't so shit compared to the other two. For some reason I don't really like writing on the rhyming structure; I personally don't think it adds a whole lot of depth, and it takes quite a lot of explaining to do throughout the essay. But the way you described the whole iambic pentameter sounds great, it is just a way of condemning the war once again.

At a Calvary Near the Ancre is pretty good. The core theme that is utilised is bibliomancy, which aims to highlight the little indifference between Jesus on the crucifixion being abandoned by his fellow disciples, to the soldiers being abandoned by the priests of the war. While it doesn't actually specify any of this, the poem is clearly open for interpretation as the poem isn't actually set in the context of war; the technique almost acts as a form of disambiguation to reveal the truths of the poem.

Have you got Skype? I think it'd be pretty handy if we swapped notes and saw each others interpretations because we could double up on our writing and get more quality!

if you get time you should look over 'the next war'. it shows an anthropomorphised representation of death chatting with soldiers and laughing with them. you could talk about how constantly being confronted with the savagery of the battlefield and their own morality has demystified death to the soldiers to the point where he's like a friend, or you could even argue that death has become a familiar comfort to them. in my last essay i wrote partially about owen's subversion of the ideals of horror and beauty and this poem worked really really well with it

yeah that's basically what it is - ten lines per syllable, with every second syllable stressed. the structure itself doesn't have much meaning, it's just a very traditional way of structuring poetry - which means when owen uses it imperfectly, you can get some pretty nice analysis out of the meaning behind it.
i know what you mean about rhyming schemes, i don't really like analysing those. writing about how pararhyme makes it feel unnatural seems a bit shallow tbh haha.

hmm i might take a look at that, i think i need more poems to discuss the role of religion in warfare.

yeah i have got skype, send me a pm with your username. i reckon it could be really useful to swap interpretations