WWI Poetry

1. WWI Poetry By: Jeemin Han, Sangwoo Song, Staci Shon

2. Poetry Characteristics • Before WWI: • Based on imaginations • Made to entertain readers • Exotic endings

3. Poetry Characteristics • Immediate experiences in poetry (what they have render and whitnessed) • Poets inherit poetic voices • Soldiers wrote it for enjoyment and reveal their emotions • had no tradition to draw upon (as background sources) • poorly equipped (short with resources during war)

4. Giuseppe Ungaretti • Greatest Italian poet in 20th century • served an infantryman with the 3rd Army from 1915-1918 • he was transferred to the Western Front where Italian forces fought with distinction • pure style was achieved by condensation to essentials and is in the tradition of the French Symbolists

5. Vigil by. Giuseppe Ungaretti A whole night long crouched close to one of our men butchered with his clenched mouth grinning at the full moon with the congestion of his hands thrust right into my silence I've written letters filled with love I have never been so coupled to life

6. Georg Traki • Trakl was sent as a medical official • Trakl suffered frequent depression by the horror • he tried to shoot himself from the strain • After hospitalized and placed under close observation • Trakl lapsed into deeper depression • Trakl had committed suicide from an overdose of cocaine.

7. Klage Dreamless sleep - the dusky Eagles nightlong rush about my head, man's golden image drowned in timeless icy tides. On jagged reefs his purpling body. Dark echoes sound above the seas. Stormy sadness' sister, see our lonely skiff sunk down by starry skies: the silent face of night.

8. Isaac Rosenberg • young poet filled with hopes to make his living as a portrait artist and had moved to South Africa • He returned to England in 1915, enlisted in 1916 and was killed at the front on April 3, 1918.

9. Dead Man's Dump The plunging limbers over the shattered track Racketed with their rusty freight, Stuck out like many crowns of thorns, And the rusty stakes like sceptres old To stay the flood of brutish men Upon our brothers dear. The wheels lurched over sprawled dead But pained them not, though their bones crunched, Their shut mouths made no moan. They lie there huddled, friend and foeman, Man born of man, and born of woman, And shells go crying over them From night till night and now. Earth has waited for them, All the time of their growth Fretting for their decay: Now she has them at last! In the strength of their strength Suspended--stopped and held.

10. Dead Man's Dump What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit? Earth! have they gone into you! Somewhere they must have gone, And flung on your hard back Is their soul's sack Emptied of God-ancestralled essences. Who hurled them out? Who hurled? None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass, Or stood aside for the half used life to pass Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth, When the swift iron burning bee Drained the wild honey of their youth. What of us who, flung on the shrieking pyre, Walk, our usual thoughts untouched, Our lucky limbs as on ichor fed, Immortal seeming ever? Perhaps when the flames beat loud on us, A fear may choke in our veins And the startled blood may stop.

11. Dead Man's Dump The air is loud with death, The dark air spurts with fire, The explosions ceaseless are. Timelessly now, some minutes past, Those dead strode time with vigorous life, Till the shrapnel called `An end!' But not to all. In bleeding pangs Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home, Dear things, war-blotted from their hearts. Maniac Earth! howling and flying, your bowel Seared by the jagged fire, the iron love, The impetuous storm of savage love. Dark Earth! dark Heavens! swinging in chemic smoke, What dead are born when you kiss each soundless soul With lightning and thunder from your mined heart, Which man's self dug, and his blind fingers loosed?

12. Dead Man's Dump A man's brains splattered on A stretcher-bearer's face; His shook shoulders slipped their load, But when they bent to look again The drowning soul was sunk too deep For human tenderness. They left this dead with the older dead, Stretched at the cross roads. Burnt black by strange decay Their sinister faces lie, The lid over each eye, The grass and coloured clay More motion have than they, Joined to the great sunk silences.

13. Dead Man's Dump Here is one not long dead; His dark hearing caught our far wheels, And the choked soul stretched weak hands To reach the living word the far wheels said, The blood-dazed intelligence beating for light, Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels Swift for the end to break Or the wheels to break, Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight. Will they come? Will they ever come? Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules, The quivering-bellied mules, And the rushing wheels all mixed With his tortured upturned sight. So we crashed round the bend, We heard his weak scream, We heard his very last sound, And our wheels grazed his dead face.

14. Wilfred Edward Salter Owen • Well-known french poet • "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity" • “The Show” published on January 16th, 1917 • Before the war, known for optimistic and cheerful personality • After war, became gloomy and dark, his poem turned depressing and grotesque • Can be seen in “The Show”

15. The Show My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,As unremembering how I rose or why,And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques. Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugsOf ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed. By them had slimy paths been trailed and scrapedRound myriad warts that might be little hills.

16. From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes. (And smell came up from those foul openingsAs out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.) On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,Brown strings towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.

17. Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten. I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten. Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather. And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hidIts bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.

18. Unkown German poet • Thought to be written by a sapper (engineer combat soldier) • Nationalistic feeling • Hatred towards France • Emphasize how strong German is

19. Arogonne Forest at Midnight Argonne Forest, at midnight, A sapper atands on guard. A star shines high up in the sky, bringing greetings from a distant homeland. And with a spade in his hand, He waits forward in the sap-trench. He thinks with longing on his love, Wondering if he will ever see her again. The artillery roars like thunder, While we wait in front of the infantry, With shells crashing all around. The Frenchies want to take our position. Should the enemy threaten us even more, We Germans fear him no more. And should he be so strong, He will not take our position.

20. The storm breaks! The mortar crashes! The sapper begins his advance. Forward to the enemy trenches, There he pulls the pin on a grenade. The infantry stand in wait, Until the hand grenade explodes. Then forward with the assault against the enemy, And with a shout, break into their position. Argonne Forest, Argonne Forest, Soon thou willt be a quiet cemetary. In thy cool earth rests much gallant soldiers' blood.

21. Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov • Influential Russian poet • two St. George Crosses • Married to Anna Akhamatova • A noble poet as well • Contributed to Russian economic durin WWI • The Quiver (1916). • Isolation, and grotesque

22. The Lost Tram I walked an unfamiliar street And suddenly heard a raven's cry, And the sound of a lute, and distant thunder,- In front of me a tram was flying. How I jumped onto its foot board, Was a mystery to me, Even in daylight it left behind A fiery trail in the air. It rushed like a dark, winged storm, And was lost in the abyss of time... Tram-driver, stop, Stop the tram now.

23. Too late. We had already turned the corner, We tore through a forest of palms, Over the Neva, the Nile, the Seine We thundered across three bridges. And slipping by the window frame, A poor old man threw us an inquisitive glance- The very same old man, of course, Who had died in Beirut a year ago. Where am I? So languid and troubled The beat of my heart responds: "Do you see the station where you can buy A ticket to the India of the soul?”

24. A sign...Blood-filled letters Announce: "Zelennaya,"-I know that here Instead of cabbages and rutabagas The heads of the dead are for sale. In a red shirt, with a face like an udder, The executioner cuts my head off, too, It lies together with the others Here, in a slippery box, at the very bottom. And in a side street a board fence, A house three windows wide, a gray lawn... Tram-driver, stop, Stop the tram now.

25. Mashenka, you lived here and sang, You wove me, your betrothed, a carpet, Where are your voice and body now, Is it possible that you are dead? How you groaned in your front chamber, While I, in a powdered wig, Went to introduce myself to the Empress Never to see you again. Now I understand: our freedom Is only an indirect light from those times, People and shadows stand at the entrance To a zoological park of planets. And a sudden, familiar, sweet wind blows, A horseman's hand in an iron glove And two hooves of his horse Fly at me over the bridge.

26. Come Over (WW1 song) Over there Over there Send the world Send the world Over there

27. Come Over That the yanks are coming The yanks are coming The drums Drumming Everywhere

28. Come Over So prepare Say a prayer Send the word Send the word To beware

29. Come Over We’ll be over We’re coming over And we won’t come back Till it’s over Over there So prepare say a prayer Send the word Send the word To beware

30. Come Over We’ll be over were Coming over And we won’t comeback Till it’s over, Over there