Journey from Railway Clerk to Poet: A Transformation Story
Shropshire-born into a railway clerk family, this individual embraced literature and earth sciences after rejecting their Evangelical upbringing. Transitioning from an elementary teaching career with limited potential, they found solace in poetry inspired by the works of Wordsworth and Keats.
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Presentation Transcript
Born in Shropshire into a family of a railway clerk Had and Evangelical upbringing but rejected his faith later Well-read in French and English literature and earth sciences Originally qualified as an Elementary teacher with poor career prospects Started to write poetry under the influence of reading Wordsworth and Keats
In 1913, Owen became a teacher of English in Bordeaux, France Believing in the just cause of the war, he returned to England in 1915 to join the prestigious Artists Rifles In June 1916, he became a second lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment In January 1917, he arrived on the Western Front, where he took part in the bitter, bloody and prolonged Battle of the Somme Most of his best-known poems are based on this shocking, appalling experience: the mud, cold, destruction and constant shelling lasting several months
After suffering a shellshock, he was sent to a War Hospital near Edinburgh Here he was assigned a great doctor, Arthur Brock, and became friends with Siegfried Sassoon Especially under the overwhelming influence of Sassoon, the tone and style of his poetry changed dramatically from heroic and patriotic to tragic, realistic and protest-like His poems from the years 1917 and 1918 ( Insensibility , Strange Meeting ) are among the best war poems in English In the poems, he speaks for the troops but his poetic allegiance to the great Romantics gives him a wider view
Owen died in France, shortly after winning the Military Cross Tragically, he died on 4 November 1918, in the last battle of the war
Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen, Futility Move him into the sun Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields half-sown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds Woke once the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?
Billy Collins, Futility John Donne tells the sun where to go, Blake s flower is busy counting its steps, and nothing like it are the eyes of Shakespeare s girl, but this one over France is as real as the soldier s body lying there not a metaphor this time, unless the sun is the court of last appeal. And what we call the speaker is really young Owen saying his hinged poem, which quickly slips from hope to a knot of a question then swings us back to the title that we knew from the start, a thorn we carried through the poem, but takes us still by sad surprise. If only he knew that in world wars we are only up to number II and have a long way to go before we show our final colors on a torn flag.
Study the titles of Owens poems in relation to their actual contents. How does the sonnet form of Owen s poems affect the reader s ideological, intellectual and emotional response to them? Discuss the images and sound patterns that Owen uses to speak the unspeakable ? Discuss the characteristics of femininity in Owen s poems. What is the function of allusions to the English literary canon in Collins poem?
