Modern Poetry

1. Modern Poetry

2. He was born into the aristocracy. • He attended Cambridge and then lived the life of a country gentleman. • He enlisted as a patriot and idealist, and he distinguished himself as an officer. • His idealism changed within the first two years of his enlistment. • He wrote savage poems detailing the brutality and debasement of trench warfare. • He wrote against the wars, protesting to the war department and his commanding officers. • He expected court-martial, but instead was diagnosed as shell-shocked. • At a military hospital in Scotland, he met Wilfred Owen. Siegfried sassoon (1886-1967)

3. Rear-guard - a detachment of troops that protects the rear of a military force • The “he” in this poem is Sassoon himself. • Oxymoron: combination of apparently contradictory ideas • Stanza 1 • The soldier gropes through a trench, shining his flashlight from side to side. • The air is “unwholesome.” • Why? The Rear-guard

4. Stanza 2 • He lists what litters the trench: tins, boxes, vague shapes, a smashed mirror, a mattress. • He is fifty feet below the battle. • Imagery & oxymoron • “rosy gloom” The Rear-guard

5. Stanza 3 • He trips and grabs hold of the trench’s wall. • He sees someone lying at his feet and stoops down to get the man’s attention by tugging on his arm. • He wants to know how to get to headquarters, but the man does not reply. • Because he is exhausted, he becomes very frustrated when the man doesn’t answer. The Rear-guard

6. Stanza 4 • He yells at the man and kicks him, but the man doesn’t move or answer. • When he shines his light across the man’s face, he realizes the man is dead. • This scene highlights the savagery of war. • 1) in the description of the dead man • The face “terribly glaring,” eyes still look in “agony,” hands still holding the black wound, the man still left in the trench even though he’s been dead 10 days. • 2) in the treatment of the dead man • The stress and exhaustion of war, leads a soldier to assault a dead man The Rear-guard

7. Stanza 4 • He staggers on till he finds the stair leading out of the trench. • Imagery: “dawn’s ghost” • The soldiers in the trench are described as “dazed, muttering creatures underground.” • He climbs out of the trench. • His experience has been one of horror (“sweat of horror in his hair”) • The atmosphere has been hellish (“unloading hell behind him step by step”) The Rear-guard

8. Overall Theme • War is hell. The Rear-guard

9. Literary influences • John Keats • Modernist French poets • He was a master of half-rhyme. • He developed as a poet during the Great War, in the trenches and in military hospital. • He wrote some of the most biting antiwar verses ever written. • He died seven days before the war ended. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

10. dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country” The crucial event in this poem is a soldier dying from poison gas. Dulce et Decorum Est

11. Stanza 1 • The soldiers are physically exhausted and physically ill • “bent double,” “Men marched asleep,” “Drunk with fatigue” • “coughing like hags,” “limped on, blood-shod,” “all went lame” • They are marching away from the front, • As they march, gas shells (Five-Nines) fall behind them. Dulce et Decorum Est

12. Stanza 2 • Someone calls out – telling the men to quickly don their gas masks. • The soldiers clumsily put their helmets on just in time. • “ecstasy of fumbling” • One soldier does not get his mask on in time, and stumbles around in the gas. • The narrator watches this man die. • “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” Dulce et Decorum Est

13. Stanza 3 • The narrator relives this memory in his dreams (nightmares). • He is always helpless to save the man. Dulce et Decorum Est

14. Stanza 4 • The narrator speaks directly to the reader, and puts the reader in his place. • If the reader could experience these “smothering dreams,” if the reader had “flung” the soldier in a wagon and seen the dead soldier’s “white eyes” and heard the “blood come gargling” from the man’s lungs – then he would not spread the lie that it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country. Dulce et Decorum Est

15. Stanza 4 • What words does Owen use in his description of the dead soldier that show this man’s death was not “sweet and honorable”? • Theme • It is notsweet and honorable to die for one’s country. Dulce et Decorum Est

16. He studied at Cambridge and then traveled te European continent. His early poems celebrate love and nature. When WWI broke out, Brooke received a commission in the Royal Navy. The poems he wrote during a lull in the fighting in 1914 captured the hope and patriotism of a country that believed in the war efforts. He died in 1915 from blood poisoning. Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

17. This sonnet is a contemplation of death. • In the octave - • The speaker asks that if he should die in a foreign land, his loved ones think of his body as a piece of England. • In the sestet – • The speaker believes that his spirit will enter heaven, a kind of idealized dream of England. The Soldier

18. A poetic prodigy, Thomas wrote some of his most famous works before age twenty. He was largely self-educated. Conflict with his parents and his wife led him to drink, which eventually caused his early death. His reading tours were thrilling, and he charmed both British and American audiences. Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)

19. Elegy • A poem that mourns the death that has already occurred • This poem is an elegy that speaks to a dying man, urging him not to surrender but to meet death in a spirit of challenge. Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night

20. Villanelle • Do not go gentle into that good night, A1 Old age should burn and rave at close of day; bRage, rage against the dying of the light. A2 • Though wise men at their end know dark is right, aBecause their words had forked no lightning theybDo not go gentle into that good night. A1 • Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright aTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, bRage, rage against the dying of the light. A2 • Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, aAnd learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, bDo not go gentle into that good night. A1 • Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightaBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, bRage, rage against the dying of the light. A2 • And you, my father, there on the sad height, aCurse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. bDo not go gentle into that good night. A1Rage, rage against the dying of the light. A2 Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night

21. Lyric poetry • Expresses emotions or thoughts • In “Fern Hill,” Thomas conveys a vivid memory of a young boy’s enchanted life in the Welsh countryside. Fern Hill