Jon Stallworthy (1935–2014)

There is undeniable poignancy in the life of a young man who died in action aged twenty-five, just one week before the Armistice. But what made me want to read this biography was to learn more about the poet whose words first struck me as Benjamin Britten set them in his War Requiem. This biography celebrates what Stallworthy calls “the disciplined sensuality, the passionate intelligence that distinguish Owen’s poetry at its best.” It also shows the challenge in publishing a show more full-length biography about such a short life. I grew impatient while reading the first chapters, which traced his ancestry and his unremarkable childhood. I could have also done with less background information on military matters, such as the German retrenchment to the Hindenburg line. This made the book seem padded.

Nevertheless, I appreciated the context Stallworthy offers for several poems and his explanation of Owen’s technical innovation, pararhyme. This helped my understanding and enjoyment (if one can say that about some of the most harrowing poems I’ve ever read).

I read the first edition, since it is what I owned, but the revised edition (2014) benefits from what Stallworthy learned in preparing the critical edition of Owen’s poems. It also considers the influence he had on poets who came after him, such as Auden, Spender, Hughes, and Heaney, as well as the rise in Owen’s reputation. show less

This is an outstanding Anthology of War Poetry, starting with The Bible and Homer (c.900) and ending, so appropriately, with Peter Porter's "Your Attention Please" about Nuclear Armageddon.

The thirteen-page introduction by Jon Stallworthy is excellent and should be read by all naval and military officers - it's a brief overview of the art of war, of the military profession over the past three millennia.

Good survey of the main poets of World War I, including the most famous but also some who are less well known. Written firmly from a pacifist perspective, and therefore shows some bias against those poets who saw the war in a better light than writers whose poetry is best known today (eg Julian Grenfell, whose beautiful paeon of praise to fighting, 'Into Battle' is described as 'rather horrifying' and loftily seen as the product of a culture of the past, as if that was not true of all the poets.

Meh. I'm sure this says something about me, but the most interesting poems in here were in the "Aberrations" section.