page_title: 1917 in poetry
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: 1917 in poetry / Events
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of the poet Siegfried Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot (died 1937). Painting dated 1917. Oil on canvas, 61 cm x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum.
context_page_description: Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
context_section_description: January — Philosopher Hu Shih, the primary advocate for the revolution in Chinese literature at this time to replace scholarly language with the vernacular, publishes an article in the magazine New Youth (Xin Qingnian) titled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", in which he originally emphasizes eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart (next year he will compress the list to four points).
  February — The Little Review moves from Chicago to New York City with the help of Ezra Pound (its foreign editor from May).
  May — W. B. Yeats acquires Thoor Ballylee in Ireland.
  May 2 — English poet Marian Allen completes the poem "To A. T. G." a few days after hearing of the death in action of her fiancé Arthur Greg, the first of several to his memory.
  May–June — T. S. Eliot takes over as editor of The Egoist, a London literary monthly, when Richard Aldington leaves for the British Army.
  July
  English poet Siegfried Sassoon issues his "Soldier's Declaration" against prolongation of World War I and is sent (with assistance from Robert Graves) by the military authorities to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where on August 17 Wilfred Owen introduces himself. With his encouragement, Owen writes "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum est"; the latter work's horrifying imagery makes it one of the most popular condemnations of war ever written. Like almost all Owen's poetry, these remain unpublished until after his death in action next year.
  With the United States not yet fighting in World War I, Americans John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings and Robert Hillyer volunteer for the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.
  Last issue of Others: A Magazine of the New Verse, founded by Alfred Kreymborg in 1915 and publishing  poetry and other writing, as well as visual art; contributors include William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, T. S. Eliot, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Djuna Barnes, Man Ray, Skipwith Cannell and Lola Ridge.
  July 15 — Welsh-language poet Hedd Wyn posts his awdl "Yr Arwr" ("The Hero") as his entry for the poetry competition at the National Eisteddfod of Wales on the same day as he marches off with the 15th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers towards the Battle of Passchendaele in which he will be killed a fortnight later. On September 6 at the ceremony of Chairing of the Bard at the Eisteddfod, held at Birkenhead, the empty druidical chair which Wyn, as winner, should have occupied is draped in a black sheet, "The festival in tears and the poet in his grave." This becomes known as "The Eisteddfodd of the Black Chair."
  Summer — Russian writer Boris Pasternak composes My Sister, My Life; this circulates orally and in manuscript for several years before publication.
  c. Summer — The Siuru expressionistic and neo-romantic literary movement in Estonia is formed by a group of young poets and writers.
  October 20 — 51-year-old poet W. B. Yeats marries 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees at Harrow Road register office in London with Ezra Pound as best man, a couple of months after having had a proposal of marriage to his ex-mistress's daughter, Iseult Gonne, rejected.
  November — Publication of The Muse in Arms, an anthology of British war poetry.
caption: Portrait of Siegfried Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot, 1917 (Fitzwilliam Museum)
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