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Just following David's lead (if we can still call him that) but I did think of Sassoon, and your point about him is relevant to the whole thread. Rosenberg's 'At Break of Day in the Trenches' is one of the most astonishing poems of the war and, retracting what I said, it still seems to me extraordinarily contemporary - clearly leads in and on to Keith Douglas's poems of the 2nd WW. But though I've tried to find other poems of his that can really stand beside it in its modernity I've never really done so. It could also be taken into consideration that Ungaretti survived where Owen and Rosenberg didn't. Jamie ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 2:40 PM Subject: Re: "Cambridge Poetry and Political Ambition" by Robert Archambeau > Being picky, Jamie, but when you say: > > "[Ungaretti] wrote some of the finest poetry of the First World War in a > modernist idiom which makes Owen and Rosenberg look as though they belong > to a previous century", > > ... is Rosenberg the best example to cite here along with Owen? If you'd > said "Owen and Sassoon", I wouldn't have blinked, and probably agreed. > But Rosenberg? Wherefore Rosenberg, of all possible cases? > > Which reminds me, though it's a slightly different issue than how avant or > retro an individual Great Patriotic War poet is, I'm fascinated by the > curious way they break up into Officer Class (Owen, Sassoon) and Other > Ranks (Rosenberg, Ivor Gurney, Saki), in whereabouts in the military > hierarchy they chose to enlist, especially as this doesn't correlate with > their social background. (Sasson and H.H.Monro being distinctly upper > class in background, the others from a range of positionings among the > middle classes.) > > But this doesn't quite match the positions taken up by the poetry they > write, and for all of me, much the most politically effective, in terms of > agit prop, was Sassoon who was, at the same time, the least poetically > avant of the lot. > > But then again, as a poster poem for the GPW, nothing quite overtook > Brooke's "The Soldier", which still may, outside the teaching of First > World War English Poets alongside the Metaphysical Poets at A-level, be > the most familiar. > > And *that in turn managed to drive Thomas Hardy's much more complex > "Drummer Hodge" (which was making exactly the opposite "political" point > to Brooke, though Brooke ripped off Hardy's central image), out of > consciousness. > > But the classic case of a quite stunning exemplification of the whole > Officer Class / Other Ranks / Lesser Races set of assumptions around at > the time (though it was written before) still has to be Henry Newbolt's > "Vita Lampada" which can still be found read with a total lack of irony, > especially among sports faculties at UK universities. > > Play up, play up, and play the game indeed!! > > Robin