Booklist Review
*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jargon and slang terms as well as place names and literary allusions in the endnotes, and includes two previously unpublished poems by a personal favorite, the composer-poet Ivor Gurney.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.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
Though one might wonder why another anthology of WW I poetry, this is an exceptional collection. The scholarly apparatus is first-rate, from the general introduction and masterful time line to the author introductions and the extensive and detailed explanatory notes. Kendall (Univ. of Exeter, UK; author of Modern English War Poetry, CH, Jun'07, 44-5501, and editor of The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry, 2009) did an excellent job of collecting and contextualizing the usual major poets, along with some important minor poets. Women war poets, including Sinclair, Mew, Borden, Cole, and Cannan, are represented ably. In addition, an extensive selection of music-hall and trench songs is included, usefully annotated as well. The Georgians, as opposed to the modernists, are almost without exception represented in this volume, and for good reason: their work was the contemporaneous response to the Great War, even if insufficiently read or appreciated at the time. A pragmatic bibliography and index round out this pleasing volume, which will be useful for lovers of poetry and students of the period. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. B. Adler Georgia Southwestern State University
