Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology
*Starred Review* More than any other conflict, the Great War, “the war to end all wars,” changed the world, sufficiently so that historian John Lukacs has remarked that the twentieth century really begins with it. It certainly made poetry modern—“common” in diction, grammar, and subject matter while fully cognizant of the poetic past—as did no other phenomenon of its time. For once they had seen what this monstrously brutal new form of warfare was, soldier-poets determined to make readers appreciate its filth, pain, and horror. None were more conscientious about this than the British and Irish solder-poets, and it is their work that appears in Kendall’s new anthology. Kendall also includes poems by civilians who wrote most powerfully about war (Hardy, Kipling, and the now-obscure, then-famous Wilfrid Gibson) and several women who served in field hospitals and as ambulance drivers. The collection concludes with a sterling small treasury of “Music-Hall and Trench Songs” (Kendall admits to cleaning the latter up for general consumption). Kendall sketches the life of each poet included, glosses military jargon and slang terms as well as place names and literary allusions in the endnotes, and includes two previously unpublished poems by a personal favorite, the  composer-poet Ivor Gurney. A timely memorial and a great anthology. --Ray Olson