Modern English War Poetry

Tim Kendall

This is the first study to look at war poetry across the entire twentieth century and allows readers to appreciate the connections between war poets of different wars
Includes close readings of some of the most important English poets of the last hundred years
Will be of interest not only to scholars of particular poets but to all readers of modern poetry

Modern English War Poetry

Tim Kendall

Description

Tim Kendall's study offers the fullest account to date of a tradition of modern English war poetry. Stretching from the Boer War to the present day, it focuses on many of the twentieth-century's finest poets - combatants and non-combatants alike - and considers how they address the ethical challenges of making art out of violence. Poetry, we are often told, makes nothing happen. But war makes poetry happen: the war poet cannot regret, and must exalt at, even the most appalling experiences. Modern English War Poetry not only assesses the problematic relationship between war and its poets, it also encourages an urgent reconsideration of the modern poetry canon and the (too often marginalised) position of war poetry within it. The aesthetic and ethical values on which canonical judgements have been based are carefully scrutinized via a detailed analysis of individual poets. The poets discussed include Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Charlotte Mew, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, W. H. Auden, Keith Douglas, Ted Hughes, and Geoffrey Hill.

Modern English War Poetry

Tim Kendall

Introduction
1:Thomas Hardy's Witness
2:Rudyard Kipling's Dress Parade
3:Wilfred Owen's Concern
4:In Pursuit of Spring: Edward Thomas and Charlotte Mew
5:Ivor Gurney's Memory
6:W. H. Auden's Journeys to War
7:Sky-Conscious: Poetry of the Blitz
8:The Vision of Keith Douglas
9:Self-Elegy: Keith Douglas and Sidney Keyes
10:Fighting Back Over the Same Ground: Ted Hughes and War
11:Geoffrey Hill's Debts
12:The Few to Profit: Poets Against War

Modern English War Poetry

Tim Kendall

Author Information

Tim Kendall, Professor of English, University of Exeter

Modern English War Poetry

Tim Kendall

Reviews and Awards

"...a feisty book, argumentative and enjoyable..." - R. K. R. Thornton MLR

"Kendall's glosses, his gatherings from correspondence, memoir and criticism, his own judgements, urgings and insistences, and the energy of those convictions and his prose are most often impressive." - Steven Isenberg, Essays in Criticism

"Teachers and scholars of modern British poetry will learn a good deal from Kendall...Kendall's comments on both form and content are also penetrating and useful... his discussion of the unique power and problems inherent in war poetry which will give this book a long shelf life..." - Stephen E. Tabachnick, English Literature in Transition: 1880-1920

"This is a feisty book; argumentative, enjoyable and I imagine deliberately contentious...Kendall's assertions and arguments...are complex, detailed, forceful, often persuasive...It moves away from the conventional, argues its case with detail and rigour and delights as much as annoys...this book will become the starting point for many a fruitful discussion." - R.K.R.Thornton, Friends of the Dymock Poets Newsletter

"Simultaneously brilliant, wide-ranging and troubling" - The Hardy Review

"...a valuable contribution to poetry criticism. tout court...enlightening and well-written survey" - PN review

"an ambitious and powerful book..." - James Bridges, The Ivor Gurney Society Journal

"...a well-written and clearly argued account..." - The Hardy Society Journal

"As a critic unafraid to have opinions...Kendall is unsentimental in discriminating between the strengths and weaknesses of his men." - Jeremy Noel-Tod, TLS