Post by Irene McCready
Forgotten Heroes - Rediscovered for the Digital Age: An Anthology of Tweets for the War Poets Association (edited by Samuel Gray).
War Poets Association, 2022.
The period of lockdown proved to be a productive spell for many, especially so for Samuel Gray, known to many of us through membership of various poetry and literary societies. It was one of these organisations, the War Poets Association, that commissioned Sam to edit this anthology with very pleasing results. The concept of "tweeting" one’s favourite poems from the First World War was a brilliant one, and over the course of the lockdown the collection of poem and poets grew and this fascinating book emerged.
Sam Gray tells us that the anthology contains 294 poems by 133 poets. Many are well- known to this reader, e.g. Julian Grenfell and W N Hodgson, but some are entirely new, e.g. Clifford Flower, Digby Haseler, and these poems came as a delightful surprise.
The poets selected cover a broad spectrum and apart from Ivor Gurney there is only a scattering of the most-read poets Wilfred Owen is included twice and Sassoon three times. German and other European poets are heavily represented, Georg Trakl being the most familiar (four poems). Alfred Lichtenstein is also a popular choice (six). Vera Brittain is the most well-known of the 16 female poets who have been included in the book (nine poems). But there are others; Mary Borden features well as does May Wedderburn Cannon.
The structure of the anthology is simple; Sam Gray has logically divided it into eleven separate sections which denote the escalation/progression of the war, starting with "Anticipation and Preparation" and ending with "Legacy - Peace, Hope, Diplomacy". The intervening sections cover poems relating to "No Man's Land", "Bereavement", "Patriotism", and so on.
From three or four of these eleven sections, I have selected a few poems which have appealed to me. I do not propose to go into any in-depth analysis of each poem. I have chosen them because they contain something of my understanding of the war and chime with my experience of my many visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.
Sam Gray heads the first section with an Ivor Gurney poem entitled “To The Poet Before Battle” (p 11), in which he urges the poet to do justice to the craft and justice to himself in war. Hungarian poet Ferenc Bekassy caught my attention in this segment with his poem “1914” (p 21). There are seven verses of rhyming couplets encapsulating the soldier’s experience of this war. The first verse contains the euphoria of the first recruits to enlist about which we have read so much. The eagerness, the enthusiasm, it is all there. “He went without fears, he went gaily, since go he must”. But the second verse brings us back down to reality. “He fell without a murmur in the noise of battle, found rest”. He with “so many thousand lay round him” It would need his mother to identify him.
The poem moves on to say that he was not a pawn but a human being and his life was cut short. No chance for him of marriage and a home. The poem ends with a plea from the poet, “Mourn, O my sisters singly, for a hundred thousand dead”. A bilingual Cambridge graduate and friend of Rupert Brooke, Bekassy died on the Russian front in 1915. Friend and poet Frances Cornford pays a poignant tribute to him with her poem “Feri Bekassy” (p 77).
German poet Alfred Lichtenstein writes “Before dying I must make my poem. Quiet, comrades, don’t disturb me”. This is the opening line of "Leaving for the Front" (P26). “Soon they’ll be throwing me into a nice mass grave” This is a short, sardonic poem, an effective evocation of what the ordinary recruit could expect from war.
E A Mackintosh, a particular favourite of mine, is featured in the section "No Man’s Land", in his poem of the same name. (p 59). On sniper duty, looking out onto the landscape, he reflects on the possibilities of the night. He experiences the sound of the wind in the trees and noises on the enemy front line: “Is it the wind in the branches sighing, Or a German trying to stop a sneeze” This takes the poet back in time to his place of longing and more cultured sneezes. But he knows that he is in the same position as the German opposite and he too is cold. This breaks the deadlock and the Boche prepares to move; there the poet can’t be sure that he is still in firing sight nor does he care. “Anyway, shooting is over-bold” “Oh, damn you, get back to your trench, you blighter. I really can’t shoot a man with a cold”.
Mackintosh, a lieutenant in the Seaforth Highlanders, was killed in action on 21st November 1917 and is buried in Orival Wood Cemetery near Flesquieres. In July 2015, almost 98 years after his death, I had occasion to visit his grave, together with the rest of a Western Front tour. Someone very thoughtfully produced a bottle of scotch whisky and we were able to toast him with a “dram”.
"Patriotism and Sacrifice: God and Death", with 72 entries, is by far the largest section of Sam Gray’s categories. There are many interesting inclusions, but the one which stands out for me is Leslie Coulson’s “Who Made The Law?” (p 79). It begins with the question “Who made the Law that men should die in meadows?”…. “Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards? Who spread the hills with flesh, with blood and brains? Who made the Law?” The poem carries on in much the same vein: this is a cry from the poet’s heart, written in 1916 when soldiers were no longer under the illusion that sacrifice was “sweet and fitting”.
It is not my intention to bore the reader by discussing every poem which appealed to me and so I will to scurry through the remaining categories of this fascinating volume and make one or two selections which strongly resonate with me.
Margaret Postgate Cole was familiar to me as political sociologist, therefore her appearance in this book took me completely by surprise. I especially enjoyed her very beautiful poem “Falling Leaves”. (p 132) which is under the heading of "Family, Bereavement and Mourning". Also on a similar theme of unnecessary sacrifice is Sarojini Naidu’s “The Gift of India” (p 135). This section features a greatest number of women poets, Vera Brittain having the most entries. Reading through her pieces, all of which are about the men she lost, it is easy to understand how she she was able to write such a haunting, soulful memoir as Testament of Youth which, once read, has remained in my memory over many decades.
“Scots and Mud`’ was a short segment of this anthology, surprisingly so when one thinks about the living conditions in the average trench. There are a few excerpts from letters on the subject by Ivor Gurney, Wilfred Owen and others, but the clearest voice is that of Mary Borden with her epic poem “The Song of Mud” (p 119/20). These 50-plus lines of blank verse teeter on the verge of a rhythmic rant. Mud is the enemy of them all; it is “The impertinent, the intrusive, the ubiquitous, the unwelcome”. She tells the reader that this mud gets everywhere, in everything, and it “Soaks up the fire, the noise; soaks up the energy and the courage; Soaks up the power of the armies”. It “hides bodies” and yet it is “beautiful, glistening, golden mud that covers the hills like satin”. Mary Borden has painted a superb word-picture, terse, taut and yet graphic; worthy of the finest sepia prints.
A little humour on which to end: `”Lieutenant Tatoon MC” is a glorious piece of doggerel penned by Siegfried Sassoon’s friend and mentor Edward Carpenter. The tale of his protest is told in 12 verses; all amusing and accurate. One wonders what Siegfried really thought of it; perhaps someone out there reading this, knows?
Sam Gray, in conjunction with the War Poets Association, has gifted a little gem to the poetry-reading public. From poems tweeted to him, he has selected examples which cover most aspects of The Great War. He has included many unknown and little-known names There have also been a few surprises; for example, I was unaware that William Orpen was a poet as well as a war artist.
I particularly enjoyed the biographical sketches heading some of the poems, also the mention of links between poets - that Max Plowman was treated at Craiglockhart by Dr Rivers was another piece of information, new to me. Space and time permitting, more of these interjections would have been very welcome.
Overall this is a splendid volume of poems and one which I will keep close at hand for a long time to come and I hope that any reader of this piece will have a similar enjoyable experience with this highly accessible anthology.
