War Poetry Unit
What is War Poetry?
Poets have written about the experience of
war since the Greeks, but the young soldier
poets of the First World War established
war poetry as a literary genre. Their
combined voice has become one of the
defining texts of Twentieth Century Europe.
In 1914 hundreds of young men in uniform
took to writing poetry as a way of striving to
express extreme emotion at the very edge of
experience. The work of a handful of these,
such as Owen, Rosenberg and Sassoon, has
endured to become what Andrew Motion
has called ‘a sacred national text’ (in
Britain).
War poetry is about the very large questions
of life: identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty,
courage, compassion, humanity, duty, desire,
death. Its response to these questions, and
its relation of immediate personal
experience to moments of national and
international crisis, gives war poetry an
extra-literary importance. Owen wrote that
even Shakespeare seems ‘vapid’ after
Sassoon: ‘not of course because Sassoon is a
greater artist, but because of the subjects’.
Steps to take:
1) Open up the accompanying powerpoint to this unit. You can find it at
www.regentspencer.wordpress.com. Read through the powerpoint and complete the
various poetry assignments there.
2) Complete Dulce et Decorum Est located in this package
3) Complete the War Poetry Final Assignment located in this package.
Amount of time allotted for package: 10-12 hours
Poems from PPT
- 67 marks
Dulce et Decorum
- 13 marks
War Poetry Final Assign.
– 20 marks
---- Total = 100 marks
Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST – a Latin saying
(taken from an ode by Horace). The words
were widely understood and often quoted
at the start of the First World War.
They mean "It is sweet and right."
“Dulce et Decorum Est” – 13 marks
1. What are three of the negative aspects of war as described by Owen in this poem.
2. Why are the opening lines of the poem surprising? Use a quote to illustrate and explain how this
unexpected image is created.
3. How are the men feeling in the opening stanza? Offer a quote from the poem and go on to
explain what this shows about their physical and mental condition.
4. How is the rhythm/pace of the poem quickened in stanza 2? Give a quote and explain why
Wilfred Owen chose to do this?
5. Stanza 2: What makes the description of death by poisonous/mustard gas so dramatic? Give a
quote and explain technique has Owen employed?
6. What is the tone of the last 4 lines of the poem? Use a quote to support your answer. Why did
the poet feel like this?
7. What do YOU think – is it good to die for your country? Is it “sweet and right”?
War Poetry Final Assignment – 20 marks
Your task it to either:
a) Write your own war sonnet
b) Annotate a war poem
A) Writing a War Sonnet
Please write a war sonnet using the proper structure of a sonnet as well as
intentionally including 5 poetic devices. You must write a ‘Statement of Intention’ to
accompany your poem. You may write about whatever aspect of the war you choose
and you may adopt whatever position you want.
How to write a ‘Statement of Intention’.
Your statement of intention should include the following information; include the
reasons why you have chosen to write the poem in this way:
• Your intended audience
• The purpose of your poem.
• The 5 poetic devices that you have used and why.
Below is a suggested format for your ‘Statement of Intention’:
My war poem (title) is written from the perspective of (your narrator). My poem is
intended to be about (what aspect of war) for (your intended audience). The purpose
of my poem is to ….The poetic devices I have used are ….. because ….
Example: (written by a student)
“GLORIES OF A SOLDIER’S GIRL”
She intended for him to live for many years,
but he had only received his greatest fears.
She says goodbye on the final night,
as all the fire cannons ignite.
She believed the glories day by day,
but at the trenches he shall lay.
She prays to the name O Lord,
as he is towed to the hospital ward.
The hour glass draws thin,
While his internal light goes dim.
The white dove falls in shame,
the dark crows will reign.
My war poem “Glories of the soldier’s girl” the title itself is very ironic as there are no “glories” of
being the girl of a dead man. The poem is written from the perspective of one of the women
whose man died during World War 1. My poem is an anti war poem and tries to influence the
intended audience is towards the women who believe war will make their
sons/husbands/brothers a stronger man and will bring glory to their names and make them
Hero’s and makes them believe war will kill the person they love the most and how it affect them
too. The poetic devices I have used include symbolism and metaphorical language. Through
using “hour-glass” this symbolises the life of our men and how it is drawing to its end, this
persuades the reader to believe life is short. The poem involves metaphorical language through
comparing our men to the fallen “white dove” and our enemies as the “Dark crows” this allows
the reader to feel as if the enemy is very frightening and manipulative.
B) Annotating a War Poem
Please choose one of the following poems to annotate. In order to understand how to
annotate a poem, read the following pages and have a look at the annotated version of
“Athem of Doomed Youth”. Then choose one of the 4 poems that follows “Annotating
Poetry” to annotate yourself.
Annotating Poetry
Annotating is the act of marking up a text to bring attention to words, phrases, and
structure that may have some importance to the overall mood or theme of a poem.
Any student that is asked to go through the annotation process often wonders why.
Annotations help bring attention to or comment on a word, phrase, connection, or any
aspect of the writing that the writer finds interesting, of note, or of potential importance.
Just looking at a poem in black and white does not make many aspects of style or devices
stand out. Once a poem is annotated, you can start seeing connections that help to
answer the overarching questions when studying poetry:
1) What does the poem mean? and 2) How does that poem mean?
Steps to Annotate a Poem
1. Initial reading of the poem. Write any questions that pop into your head while doing the initial
reading. Write these right on to the poem in the margins!!!!!!
2. Highlight unusual words; identify any words that you do not understand and look them up.
Write the definitions on the poem.
3. Discover and mark rhyme scheme using a new letter for each end rhyme within the poem.
4. Count the amount of syllables in each line and mark the number at the end of the line.
5. Determine the poem's theme and draw arrows to the lines/words that support the theme.
6. Identify (circle or underline) figurative language used within each line of the poem. What is the
meaning of each figurative device.
7. Identify (circle or underline ) sound devices such as alliteration, assonance, and consonance.
How does it impact the text?
8. Identify (circle or underline) text that is repeated. Is there any reason the author would repeat
the text?
9. Look closely at punctuation. Does it reveal anything about the speaker of the poem? (Example:
Does it make them seem rambling, confident, nervous?)
10. Circle any words that are impactful or interesting. Determine connotative meaning. Are their any
patterns? What does it reveal about the speaker’s attitude towards the topic?
11. Reread the poem. If you are still having a hard time understanding the poem, repeat the
annotation process!
12. Write a short analysis of the poem (about 200 words). Include the following – name and author,
theme, key imagery used, tone/mood, significant parts that stuck out for you
Questions you should be able to answer after annotating a poem:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What is the theme of the poem?
What kind of strategies does the author use to point out the theme?
What is the mood of the poem?
What kind of strategies does the author use to make the mood clear?
How does the figurative language impact the poem as a whole?
How does the punctuation/number of syllables/ rhyme scheme impact the poem as a whole?
War Poems for Annotating
Poem 1: When you see millions of the mouthless dead
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
By Charles Sorley
September/October, 1915
Charles Sorley was killed at the age of twenty on 13th October 1915, in the Battle of Loos.
Poem 2: Rendezvous
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
By Alan Seeger
Alan Seeger, a US citizen, was killed on the fourth day of the Battle of the Somme, 4 July
1916, at the age of 28.
Poem 3: The Survivors
NO doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're 'longing to go out again,'-These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,-Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.
By Siegfried Sassoon
Poem 4: A Soldier’s Cemetery
Behind that long and lonely trenched line
To which men come and go, where brave men die,
There is a yet unmarked and unknown shrine,
A broken plot, a soldier’s cemetery.
There lie the flower of youth, the men who scorn’d
To live (so died) when languished Liberty:
Across their graves flowerless and unadorned
Still scream the shells of each artillery.
When war shall cease this lonely unknown spot
Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,
And flowers will shine in this now barren plot
And fame upon it through the years descend:
But many a heart upon each simple cross
Will hang
by John William Streets (killed and missing in action on 1st July 1916 aged 31)