Can you give examples of some good war poems?

Question

Specifically ones about life in the trenches etc... and tell me why they are good examples.

Answer 1

Choose from those in 'The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry' - not only English but Russian, French, German, Italian, American. Please remember these people were also involved in the wars! Personal favourites? 'Dulce et decorum est', Wilfred Owen - grandfather was a gas attack victim: 'The Kite', Aleksander Blok - 12 lines that could change your perception of warfare (first heard at a comrade's funeral!). Also, 'Do not Stand at My Grave and Weep', Anonymous - I served!

Answer 2

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.

It's about the aftermath of a gas attack, and how the author is saying once you've seen the hideous aftermath of war, then try and tell your children the lie "Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori" (rough translation " it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country").

It is one of the most famous war poems, and also a really good anti-war one.

Answer 3

look up Victor SASSOON'S war poems they dont need any explanation they depict the horrors of war especially for the ordinary Tommy in the trenches so vividly that you will never look upon war again and not be horrified

Answer 4

Graves and Owen already mentioned: also check Sassoon and Rosenberg (World War I) All were soldiers in the war, writing from personal experience and inevitably challenging its stupidity. Owen was killed just a few days before peace was announced...

Answer 5

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
- Rupert Brooke, The Soldier

Answer 6

Anything by Wilfred Owen but particularly this one 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstruous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.


What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Answer 7

Randall Jarrell wrote quite a few war poems. "His death came when he walked out on a highway amid speeding traffic." _The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century_ (Hayden Carruth, ed.). I would guess that posttraumatic stress syndrome and severe disorientation contributed to his presence on the highway. (In case you want to include in your homework the aspect of what can happen when writing poetry does not produce sufficient cathartic effect to relieve posttraumatic-stress suffering.)

Answer 8

The most famous is probably Dulce et Decorum Est. It compares the idealised view that people back home have about their young men at the front with the truth about dying in agony in a shell hole.

Answer 9

Well I wrote 2 poems about the wars (trojan and Spartan) Well anyway they are pretty good but I plan on becoming famous on them. I will sell them to you for $100.00 though.

Answer 10

Go on line and look for Poems by Rubert Brooke.