Our Contributing Editor David Beer's War Poets and Their Poems Series—A Roads Collection

From the Editor:  This is a representative listing, not inclusive of all the articles David Beer has presented on war poetry in Roads to the Great War. MH

About Our Contributor:

David Is Also a Piper

David F. Beer, PhD, is a retired English professor from the University of Texas. He is an expert on all aspects of the literary side of the Great War and has contributed to all my publications over the years and is now a Contributing Editor of Roads to the Great War.  In the introduction for an article on four neglected war poets he wrote for my old magazine, Over the Top, David explained his interest in the poetry of the Great War. 

Does anyone still read poetry? I received my PhD in English literature in 1972, having spent a year writing a dissertation on a 17th-century poet (Robert Herrick). From then on, the only poetry I read was in preparation for teaching “Intro to Lit” classes. The modern stuff appearing in the likes of the New Yorker or the Times Literary Supplement was beyond me and still is. But some 20 years ago, as my interest in the First World War developed, I discovered a huge collection of poetry that I could understand, appreciate, and be moved by. It all started by reading Owen's “Strange Meeting,” but that's another story. What I had stumbled upon was an astonishing body of thousands of poems written and published during and after the Great War.

But why bother to read war poetry? The innumerable political, social, tactical, and strategic aspects of the war make for fine and valuable study, yet if we want to enter the minds, hearts, and passions of those who were there, it's not through the causes, events, and outcomes of the war that we must travel but through the memoirs, diaries, and poetry that came from those living through the catastrophe.  DB

Articles

“Strange Meeting” by Wilfred Owen

War Poet Edgell Rickword

“Marching Men” by Majorie Pickthall (1883–1922)

Alan Seeger Makes His Rendezvous at the Somme: 4 July 1916

CRW Nevinson’s Tommies

"A Private" by Edward Thomas

The Unutterable Beauty: "Dead and Buried" by G.A. Studdert Kennedy

War Poet Jessie Pope 

Edward Owen Rutter and "The Song of Tiadatha"

“Enemies” by Siegried Sassoon

Isaac Rosenberg's "In the Trenches"

"The Song of the Mud" by Mary Borden

Lt. Rupert Brooke, Royal Naval Division
(Possibly in Cadet Uniform Before Commissioning)

War Poet Sub-Lt. Rupert Brooke, Royal Naval Division

"French Nocturne (Monchy-Le-Preux)" by C. S. Lewis

“Marching Men” by Majorie Pickthall

Wilfrid Gibson’s “Breakfast”

Alfred Joyce Kilmer, Poet and War Poet

Charles Sorley's "When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"

The War Poetry of John Allan Wyeth

Reviews

Robert Service on Duty in France

Rhymes of a Red Cross Man by Robert Service

A Deep Cry: First World War Soldier-Poets Killed in France and Flanders

Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew

Bonus

David Beer's World War One Poetry Library

A Reminder: To search our archives for other articles on this topic, or to explore other World War One interests of yours, take advantage of the site search engine at the top left corner of every page on Roads to the Great War.