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Candice, Martin I just cheated a did a quick Google on the subject and tho' I wasn't able to find exact detail there is this wonderfully jaundiced passage in the late Ted Burford's 'Limestone' mag: >Mr Poole didn't get round to mentioning the most obnoxious form of appropriation. I mean the setting of perfectly good poems to music. I understand that Housman expressly said that he didn't want "The Shropshire Lad" turned into song. It cut no ice, and so we hear the sad dragged-out tunes and mangled poetry from time to time. The worst case I know of is Britten's "War Requiem". Here Wilfred Owen's finished and possibly profound work of art; "Strange Meeting", is dynamited by Britten's arrogant colonising. (There are precedents; certain tiny wasps take over other insects and convert them into living tombs for their own offspring).< Best Dave ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin J. Walker" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 9:40 AM Subject: Re: Owen > With reference to _The War Requiem_ perhaps there's an Owen specialist on > the list who can help me with a question that has been niggling at me for a > long time: "Strange Meeting" (so overwhelmingly) near the end is partly > radically different as a text from the printed version I know of Owen's > poem; I got so accustomed to it that when I returned to the printed version > I felt disappointed (where were the "sweetest wells that ever were"?) Did > Pears or someone rewrite the poem or find a draft by the poet? > Martin >