British Poetry in the first half of the 20th century

Georgian Poets

They never formed a closely connected group, they just wrote during the reign of the king George V. They contributed poems into anthology Georgian Poetry in five collections between 1912-1922. They are stylistically and thematically very different writers but they tend to be conservative and patriotic.

ROBERT BRIDGES is often nicknamed "a poet's poet" since he wrote difficult academic poetry only scholars would understand.

Poets of the Great War

RUPERT BROOKE became famous for the sonnet The Soldier that inspired patriotism in the early months of WW1. It glorified the war and was patriotic celebration of Englishness and noble British goals in the Great War, the British were represented as good fighting against evil. The poem was even praised by Churchill as an example for soldiers. The sonnet depicts the memoirs of a deceased soldier who declares his patriotism to his homeland by stating that his sacrifice will be the eternal ownership of England.

1914 and Other Poems were criticized for not responding to the horrors of the war but he died in 1915 = too soon to do so. His death in a battle was a symbolic death of the whole generation of young patriotic Englishmen. Poem The Dead depicts soldiers who died in war ("dying has made us rarer gifts than gold") but gained immortal glory and gave heritage to their sons.

WILFRED OWEN was a strong critic of the war and died in the last year, 1918. Unlike Brooke, he angrily rejected any possible glory and highlighted the meaningless brutality, spitting on the official British propaganda.

Anthem for Doomed Youth in sonnet form is a lament for young soldiers whose lives were unnecessarily lost in the WW1 and it is also dedicated to funeral rituals suffered by those families deeply affected. Futility shows a group of soldiers attempting to revive an unconscious soldier by moving him into the warm sunlight. However, it has absolutely no effect on the soldier - he has already died = it was a futile effort.

In the poem Strange Meeting the narrator, a soldier, escapes from battle and goes down a long tunnel. He hears the moans of the dying and one of them leaps up. By the men's "dead smile" the speaker realises "I knew we stood in hell." Their reasons were the same, they both once were after "beauty in the world" but the war changed it all. The dying soldier claims "I am the enemy you killed" yesterday.

Dulce et Decorum Est presents a view from the front lines of the British soldiers attacked with chemical weapons. In the rush to equip themselves against the gas, one soldier is unable to get his mask on in time. The speaker of the poem describes the gruesome effects of the gas on the man and concludes that were one to see firsthand the reality of war, one might not repeat lying phrases about the nature of war: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. = It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON of Jewish origin refused glorification of the war, protested against meaningless butchery and made sarcastic fun of military propaganda. Sassoon narrowly avoided punishment by a martial court and was sent to military hotel to recover where he met Wilfred Owen. Collection of anti-war poems War Poems .

The poem They presents soldiers returning from the war, all of them physically or mentally wounded. An Anglican priest tries to present it as a holy mission and a noble cause against evil but soldiers know war is only meaningless destruction. The priest only replies that the ways of God are strange.

  

Poets of the 1930s-1940s

Auden Circle (late 1920s and early 1930s) was a group of young English poets at Oxford in the interwar period, aspired to bring new techniques and attitudes to English poetry. They shared socialist sympathies with a strongly Marxist view and left-winged politics. The most active members were Auden, Spender and MacNeice.

LOUIS MACNEICE (1907-1963) came from a mixed Anglo-Irish Ulster family. He moved to London, became a writer and producer for BBC but his poetry refers back to Ireland. The most common theme is the feeling of not belonging anywhere, being the mixed origin. He wrote a collection in collaboration with W. H. Auden Letters from Iceland.

Carrickfergus describes his hometown Belfast in which a proud Norman castle stands in opposition to "the Irish Quarter was a slum." The narrator says that "the Norman walled this town against the country to stop his years to the yelping of his slave." Then he turns very autobiographically, saying that born to the Anglican family, he never belonged there.

Autobiography depicts the author's childhood. His own father was not interested in him and nobody came when he cried, afraid of darkness. He also describes everyday violence in Belfast and the terror of not belonging anywhere as he feared both Catholics and Protestants.

WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN was born in England but later became an American citizen. His early work was socially committed left-wing writing but he was also influenced by the need to conceal that he was writing about homosexuality which was illegal at that time. Together with MacNeice they warned about the descent of Nazi ideology but nobody listened. Later, Auden actively fought in the Spanish civil war on the republican side.

Letters from Iceland is a travel book in prose and verse written in collaboration with Louis MacNeice. Spain 1947 is a politically-engaged pamphlet poem with mixed light-heartedness and impending doom.

STEPHEN SPENDER he is also a left-wing oriented poet. His poetry express a conflict of romantic nostalgia for rural England and the faith in progress. Praising technological progress was the poem The Pylons. The Truly Great poem has become something of a signature poem for Spender, depicting awareness of the power a genuine artist is capable of.

DYLAN THOMAS was a Welsh neo-romantic poet and a heavy drinker, famous for his villanelle Do not go gentle into that good night which tries to imitate by repetition of stanza a pattern of a folkloric dance. The poem is about death and “gentle” contrasts with “rage” = it rages against death. He wrote experimental poetry that is open to many different interpretations. He created a magical world of nature and myths but at the same theme in the presence of mortality, the omnipresent death. Under Milk Wood was his famous radio play.

PATRICK KAVANAGH /kavano/(1904-1967) was born into an Irish farmer family and never received university education, that is why he is called “a peasant poet.” He worked hard at his farm and at night read poems under the candle light. His decision to travel to London to become a real poet was not successful. His poetic voice is cynical, he did not agitate for action and had no allusions to mythology. He just wrote about common topics of everyday peasant life. He is best known for his very long poems and collection Ploughmen and Other Poems.

The Great Hunger, considered to be one of the best long poems of the 20^th century, is not really about the historical famine (there is only a notion of it) but about hunger for life, love and happiness. It depicts a life of Patrick Maguire, a farmer living with his mother and sister. Family relations are bad, mother orders him around the farm 14 hours a day and sister is compared to swine by Maguire. His life is divided according to seasons, depicting his everyday routine in months. The time when he is most desperate is summer when the girls are half-naked in the fields but Maguire is impotent, describing his penis as “impotent worm in his thigh.” Local women are not interested in him since he still lives with his mother but works hard and goes to church so he is seen as a respectable men. Part VIII is like a playful song, Maguire is sitting on the gate, having fun while watching nature. At the end he just dies, wasting his life.

Who Killed James Joyce? is mocking academics and students who killed Joyce by over-analysing his work for the sake of their dissertation. “Finnegan” refers back to Finnegan’s Wake and "Bloomsday" to celebration of Ulysses. Lough Derg contains many Christian symbols like St. Brigit's Cross.