Question: what is your understanding of war poetry?
Answer:
'War poetry' in general sense directly connected with the influence of war specially during world war 1. Though the war poetry refered in Greek but as a literary term, it introduced in this time of world war. So many war poetries are antiromantic (against to war) war poets also known as Trench poets. The trench poet means Those poets who were participated in war and used to write their own experience of war in form of poetry. we can find 3 main purpose to write war poetry.
1️⃣ Medium to express emotions.
2️⃣ To show the true picture of war.
3️⃣ To spent free time.
when we see the time line of first world war, We can find it's continue to four years. 1914 to 1918. During that time a million people were died in that condition. Mainly from British common wealth, Europe, USA. The war disaster and the death of people impact on society a lot. People were in psychological social dilema. People were started feeling meaningless for war ideals and heroic morals. let's look upon the characteristic of war poetry.
1️⃣ It used gruesome and shocking imagery :
poets were experienced very hard during that time of war and they draw a real picture of disaster by using shocking imagery in their work. As a poet they wrote the things as it is.
2️⃣ It signaled a Break off from the contemporary poetic tradition:
They broke the tradition of contemporary, and they developed their own style of writing and they tried to show real image of war in their poetry.
3️⃣ It uses the actual language of the men engaged in war :
They use the true midium or form of language which used by war soliders. In the sense they try to draw the real picture of world that time. This we can find in T. S Eliot's works.
4️⃣ Realistic documentation of war with all its brutality:
By the war literature we can get true Knowledge disaster, economy and mental health of society cause war literature present it as a realistic documentation with all its brutality.
Question: 2 Note down the difference of all the war poet .
Answer:
A war poet is a poet who participates in a war and writes about their experiences, or a non-combatant who writes poems about war. While the term is applied especially to those who served during the First World War, the term can be applied to a poet of any nationality writing about any war, including Homer's Iliad, from around the 8th century BC as well as poetry of the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, the Crimean War and other wars. Hear I write about diffrence between following five major war poets.
1. Wilfred Owen(1893–1918) : In Wilfred Owen's poem we can find themes like The loss of innocence, Brotherhood and friendship, The horrors of war, Desillusion with relligion, Nature, The irretionality of war, Emotion and feelings etc..
2. Rupert Chawner Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) : In his poetry we can find themes like Love, Death, Immortality etc.
3. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (2 October 1878 – 26 May 1962) : Guilt, Madness, Death, Injury, Sense of identity
4. Siegfried Sassoon :- death, Horror, sympathy for soldiers, Religious Authority.
Ivor Gurney :- Grueling Monotony of day - to - day military life., Religious authority.
Question:3 Compare any two poems with reference to the subject, Style of writing and patriotism.
Answer: First poem is "The Fear" by "Rupert Brooke"
➡️ poem : The Fear
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever 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.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Rupert Brooke, 1914
➡️ About poet:
An established poet before the outbreak of World War I, Rupert Brooke had traveled, written, fallen in and out of love, joined great literary movements, and recovered from a mental collapse all before the declaration of war, when he volunteered for the Royal Naval Division. He saw combat action in the fight for Antwerp in 1914, as well as a retreat. As he awaited a new deployment, he wrote the short set of five 1914 War Sonnets, which concluded with one called The Soldier. Soon after he was sent to the Dardanelles, where he refused an offer to be moved away from the front lines—an offer sent because his poetry was so well-loved and good for recruiting—but died on April 23rd, 1915 of blood poisoning from an insect bite that weakened a body already ravaged by dysentery.
➡️ About poem:
The poem "The Soldier" is one of English poet Rupert Brooke's (1887–1915) most evocative and poignant poems—and an example of the dangers of romanticizing World War I, comforting the survivors but downplaying the grim reality. Written in 1914, the lines are still used in military memorials today. "The Soldier" was the last of five poems of Brooke's War Sonnets about the start of World War I. As Brooke reached the end of his series, he turned to what happened when the soldier died, while abroad, in the middle of the conflict. When "The Soldier" was written, the bodies of servicemen were not regularly brought back to their homeland but buried nearby where they had died. In World War I, this produced vast graveyards of British soldiers in "foreign fields," and allows Brooke to portray these graves as representing a piece of the world that will be forever England. Writing at the start of the war, Brooke prefigured the vast numbers of soldiers whose bodies, torn to shreds or buried by shellfire, would remain buried and unknown as a result of the methods of fighting that war.
For a nation desperate to turn the senseless loss of its soldiers into something that could be coped with, even celebrated, Brooke’s poem became a cornerstone of the remembrance process and is still in heavy use today. It has been accused, not without merit, of idealizing and romanticizing war, and stands in stark contrast to the poetry of Wilfred Owen (1893–1918). Religion is central to the second half of "The Soldier," expressing the idea that the soldier will awake in a heaven as a redeeming feature for his death in war.
The poem also makes great use of patriotic language: it is not any dead soldier, but an "English" one, written at a time when to be English was considered (by the English) as the greatest thing to be. The soldier in the poem is considering his own death but is neither horrified nor regretful. Rather, religion, patriotism, and romanticism are central to distracting him. Some people regard Brooke’s poem as among the last great ideals before the true horror of modern mechanized warfare was made clear to the world, but Brooke had seen action and knew well of a history where soldiers had been dying on English adventures in foreign countries for centuries and still wrote it.
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➡️ The poem : The Target
I shot him, and it had to be
One of us 'Twas him or me.
'Couldn't be helped' and none can blame
Me, for you would do the same
My mother, she can't sleep for fear
Of what might be a-happening here
To me. Perhaps it might be best
To die, and set her fears at rest
For worst is worst, and worry's done.
Perhaps he was the only son. . .
Yet God keeps still, and does not say
A word of guidance anyway.
Well, if they get me, first I'll find
That boy, and tell him all my mind,
And see who felt the bullet worst,
And ask his pardon, if I durst.
All's a tangle. Here's my job.
A man might rave, or shout, or sob;
And God He takes no sort of heed.
This is a bloody mess indeed.
➡️ About poet:
Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from manic depression through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. Critical evaluation of Gurney has been complicated by this, and also by the need to assess both his poetry and his music. Gurney himself thought of music as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse".
➡️ About the poem:
The title of the poem gives the first suggestion of its subject matter. A ‘target’ is something that is aimed for – whether as an aspirational goal, or through violence – in archery, or the use of guns. It is quickly realised that the latter is involved in this ‘Target’ – and the aim was a fellow human being. The antiquated language, e.g. ‘durst’, ‘Twas’, ‘a-happening’, places this situation in the past, possibly World War One. If this is the case, the subject matter is the death of a soldier, at the hand of his enemy; the enemy and killer being the first person narrator of the poem. The poem moves on to document the killer’s reasons, his regrets, the fears of his mother and the only solution possible to quell her fears: “Perhaps it might be best/To die, and set her fears at rest”; the lack of participation from a God who ‘takes no sort of heed’ and the inescapable ‘bloody mess’ of war and ‘job’ which must be carried out by the narrator as a soldier.
Question: 4 Do you find any such regional poem/ movie/webseries/songs which can be compared to anyone of the poem given here. also give a proper explanation of the similarity.
Answer: To response the question I like to compare Rupert Brooke's poem 'The soldier' with 'desh mere' Hindi song.
➡️ The soldier:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever 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.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
➡️ 'Desh Mere' (bhuj movie) Hindi patriotic song
In both poem and sond we can find one similarity. In poem poet shows his love towards England and in song poet shows his love towards his nation India. Also both have one more similarity, they Message to the people that "They have no regret to daid for country!"
word count: 1950 words
resources: poetry foundation, grade saver
