Peter France

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

Jon Stallworthy

Poems by the modern Russian author reflect his faith in love and life and examine ethical and religious themes

Selected Poems

Poets through the ages offer interpretations of love's changing moods and forms

A Book of Love Poetry

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok

Jon Stallworthy and Peter France introduce Blok's poetry into English, retaining as much as possible his distinctive form and tone. His early poetry is inspired by mystical experience rather than events that were occurring contemporaneously.

There are almost as many definitions and different sorts of love as there are poets. Edited on the assumption that any poem which speaks of one human's desire for another is a qualifying factor, this rich and diverse anthology ranges through time and fashion to best represent 'man's changeless responses to the changeless changing seasons of his heart'.

The New Penguin Book of Love Poetry

Wilfred Owen

Offers a chronology of Owen, who was killed near the end of World War I, and gathers his poems about nature, fate, love, city life, and the war

The Poems of Wilfred Owen

Margaret W. Ferguson

Mary Jo Salter

Contains representative selections from the works of the major British and American poets, from modernized medieval texts to contemporary verse

The Norton Anthology of Poetry

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature.Dying at twenty-five, a week before the end of the First World War, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) has come to represent a generation of young men sacrificed - as it seems to the next generation, one in unprecedented rebellion against its fathers - by guilty old men: generals, politicians, profiteers. Owen has now taken his place in literary history as perhaps the first, certainly the quintessential, war poet.

Poems

First edition published under title: The Oxford book of war poetry.

The New Oxford Book of War Poetry

From the civilization of the Lower Nile to that of the Lower Hudson, more poets have written more convincingly, more poignantly about love than about any other subject. Jon Stallworthy has here selected some of the most moving, funny, shameless, and erotic love poems in the English language. Representing the work of more than 190 poets, from Sappho to Byron and Browning, from Rossetti to Wordsworth and E.E. Cummings, he offers a startling collection of love poetry down through the ages. Arranged thematically, beginning with the first drawings of young love and ending with the "long look back" of the aged, and revealing love in all its different aspects and perversities, this anthology demonstrates vividly man's changeless responses to the changing seasons of the heart."Stallworthy's book of love poetry, ranging across more than twenty centuries of writing about love 'till the stars have run away' establishes beyond the eye-shadow of a doubt that love is, has been and always will be blind."--Christian Science Monitor"A very thorough job...eccentric and entertaining."--Times Literary Supplement (London)

A revised and updated edition of Jon Stallworthy's prize-winning and classic biography of the great World War One poet, Wilfred Owen. Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today. This biography is more than a simple account of his life -- the childhood spent in the backstreets of Birkenhead and Shrewsbury, the appalling months in the trenches -- it is a poet's enquiry into the workings of a poet's mind. This paperback reproduces all the widely praised illustrations of the original edition, including drawings by the poet and facsimile manuscripts of many of his greatest poems. As 'a portrait of the artist', the book has proved, as the Scotsman predicted, 'indispensable to any student of Wilfred Owen's life and work'. Called by Graham Greene 'surely one of the finest biographies of our time', Wilfred Owen won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the W.H. Smith & Son Literary Award, and the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In its use of verse manuscripts to reveal the working of the creative imagination, it inaugurated a new form of literary biography. This edition is revised and updated and includes a new preface by the author.

Leading poet and former professor of English Literature, Jon Stallworthy, tells the story of the lives and work of twelve major poets of the First World War and provides selections of their best work. The First World War began with flag-waving, parades and poets inspired by abstract ideals. In part this reflected the national mood , but it revealed an almost universal failure to understand what modern mass warfare would really mean. The story of the 'war poets' is also the story of an awakening to the full horror of what the twentieth century came to know as 'The Great War'. Wilfred Owen said, 'My subject is War - and the pity of War'. He also said 'true Poets must be truthful'. The best war poetry was the work of writers who were also serving soldiers and was born out of their desire to tell the truth about what it was to be a soldier in the trenches - what it felt like, what it did to you and what it did to your fellow soldiers, friend or foe. The greatness of the poetry lay not just in the writer's talent, but in the unflinching accuracy with which it portrayed their terrible circumstances.

Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Offers representative selections from the works of major British and American poets, from modernized medieval texts to contemporary verse.

Poems deal with love, the sea, art, the past, war, foreign lands, fools, children, parents, religion, and travel

New and Selected Poems

Anzac Sonata

From Homer to Heaney, the voices of men and women have seldom been more piercing, more poignant, than in time of conflict. For fifty years, Jon Stallworthy has been attuned to such voices. In Survivors' Songs he explores a series of poetic encounters with war, with essays on Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and others. Beautifully written, this moving book sets the poetry and prose of the First World War and its aftermath in the wider context of writing about warfare from prehistoric Troy to Anglo-Saxon England; from Agincourt to Flanders; from El Alamein to Vietnam; from the wars of yesterday to the wars of tomorrow.

From Maldon to the Somme

Survivors' Songs

Jon Stallworthy's Wilfred Owen, called by Graham Greene 'surely one of the finest biographies of our time', won the Duff Cooper Prize, the W.H. Smith Literary Award, and the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In its use of verse manuscripts to reveal the working of the creative imagination, it inaugurated a new form of literary biography. By matching the paper, pencil, ink and twenty-four watermarks of the largely undated manuscripts with those of the poet's dated letters, Professor Stallworthy has been able to disentangle the complex chronology of Owen's work and reveal for the first time the overall development of the poet and successive stages in the development of individual poems and fragments. The edition is divided into two volumes to enable readers to have text, notes and manuscript material before them at the same time. Volume I contains an Introduction, a Biographical Table, and the text of 110 poems (many with important new readings), and supporting factual and critical notes. Volume II provides the basis for the text of the poems, reproducing many of the manuscripts and the fragments, annotated like the poems. The manuscripts and fragments are reproduced in typeset transcription, showing Owen's alterations, cancellations and reworkings. Together these volumes present more than twice the number of poems and fragments hitherto available, and comprise the most comprehensive and detailed edition of Wilfred Owen's work. It is a worthy monument to a man who lived to see only five of his poems in print, but whose work is now known throughout the English-speaking world, and indeed beyond it as the text of Benjamin Britten's great War Requiem.

The Complete Poems and Fragments: The manuscripts of the poems and the fragments

Rupert Brooke - Edmund Blunden - Wilfred Owen - Isaac Rosenberg - Siegfried Sassoon - Philip Thomas.

Poets of the First World War

Jane Potter

Wilfred Owen is the poet of pity, the voice of the soldier maimed, blinded, traumatised and killed, not just in the Great War, but in all wars since, so resonant has his message become. Although he saw only five of his poems published in his lifetime, he left behind a portfolio of poetry and letters that created a powerful legacy.This generously illustrated book tells the story of Wilfred Owen's life and work anew, from his birth in 1893 until his death one week before the Armistice on 4 November 1918. It chronicles Owen's journey from a romantic youth, steeped in the poetry of Keats, to mature soldier awakened to the horrors of the Western Front. Drawing on rich archival material such as personal books, artefacts, family photographs and numerous manuscripts, the volume takes a fresh look at Owen's apprenticeship and eventual mastery of poetry, giving a comprehensive view of the relationship between his lived experience and his writing. Those already familiar with or well-versed in Owen's work will find new material in this book, and those coming to Owen for the first time will enjoy a well researched, yet accessible, illustrated introduction to one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

An Illustrated Life

Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today – this is the comprehensive literary biography of the greatest WW1 poet Wilfred Owen tragically died in battle just a few days before the Armistice. Now, during the centenary year of his death, this biography honours Owen’s brief yet remarkable life, and the enduring legacy he left. Stallworthy covers his life from the childhood spent in the backstreets of Shrewsbury to the appalling final months in the trenches. More than a simple account of his life, it is also a poet's enquiry into the workings of a poet's mind. This revised edition contains the beautiful illustrations of the original edition, including the drawings by Owen and facsimile manuscripts of his greatest poems, as well as a new preface by the author. ‘One of the finest biographies of our time.’ Graham Greene ‘An outstanding book, a worthy memorial to its subject.’ Kingsley Amis ‘As lovingly detailed as the records of Owen's short life permit, but it is always fascinatingly readable, in fact engrossing.’ Sunday Telegraph

Jon Stallworthy

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