FOR THE FALLEN : THE POETRY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR - Wordsworth Poetry

Selected and introduced by Stephen Carver

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell…

In 1914, the age of European Imperialism came to its inevitable end, and the Twentieth Century was born in fire and blood. Despite the memoirs, histories, films, and photographs, it is the poetry of the First World War above all else that has seared the horror of this conflict onto our collective memory. It was a war of poets, as professional writers and ordinary humanity took up the pen to try to record, interpret, mourn, or simply bear witness. Literature was changed forever, the new language of Modernism emerging, while a generation of gifted and sometimes great writers was lost. This collection thus includes the work of key figures like Owen, Sassoon, and Rosenberg alongside that of minor and sometimes amateur war poets, not just from the English-speaking world but from both sides of the conflict across Europe. Some of them survived. Most of them did not.

This collection also combines the poetry of the front with the home front, particularly the voices of women, and of older, non-combatant literary giants like Kipling and Hardy. Poems are arranged by year to show the progression of the war, with each year prefaced by a short historical overview framed by a detailed Introduction. The collection concludes with brief biographies of every poet, adding to the heart-breaking story of the sacrifice, courage, carnage, and waste of war.