As George Parfitt notes in his book on World War One poetry, an editor or an anthologist begins with a 'body of work' and ends with a selection. Any anthology is a 'story with this plot, its structures being an account of how the [. . .] anthologist gets from "body of work" to "selection"'. 1 Whilst there are cases where the 'body of work' is quite clearly defined, such as the total output of Samuel Richardson or the number of surviving Elizabethan sonnets, and is knowable within limits, the 'Poetry of the First World War' is far more problematic. As Parfitt observes, does the term 'Poetry' 'include all verse ? Is "best" to be assumed between "The" and "Poetry" ? Does "of" mean "issuing from the period of", or "about", or both simultaneously ? What, if "of" means "about", is to be included ?' 2

Whether consciously or not, anthologists who have concentrated on verse that is somehow associated with the First World War have tended to emphasise either the term 'Poetry' or the term 'First World War', and their selections necessarily represent the results of this emphasis. When the emphasis is on 'Poetry' in idealist or essentialist terms, the 'raw material of the verse of the war', to use Parfitt's terms, is filtered with reference to what the anthologist understands to be absolute criteria and/or permanent standards.3 If such an approach is possible, a purely aesthetic application of such criteria and/or standards would see the war, as represented in its verse, as nothing more than a body of material from which 'great art' can come. However, if the First World War is regarded as the most important event of the twentieth century historically, and if the relevant verse is regarded as part of the recording of that event and its consequences, then it follows that the very fact of recording should, theoretically, dominate over any ideas of absolute standards of literary excellence.

However, the terms 'Poetry' and 'First World War' are less sharp-edged than they may appear. As Parfitt notes, any belief in an absolute called 'Poetry' necessarily needs to take account of an historical record which suggests that such a belief is chimerical, platonic, or subjective.4 If poetry written during the war's formal timespan is the only representative poetry of the First World War then much of Ivor Gurney's work will be excluded, as well as important poems by such poets as Graves, Sassoon and Blunden.

James Campbell believes that anthologists (and critics) of World War One poetry use an ideology of what he terms 'combat gnosticism' - 'a belief that combat represents a qualitatively separate order of experience that is difficult, if not impossible, to communicate to any who have not undergone an identical experience'.5 He notes that such an ideology has both severely limited the 'canon' of texts which mainstream First World War poetry anthologists have seen as legitimate war writing, and has simultaneously promoted the status of war poetry specifically, and war literature generally, as a discrete 'body of work' which bears little, if any, relation to non-war writing.6 In particular, this ideology 'equates the term "war" with the term "combat"', an equation visible in the ten mainstream anthologies of First World War poetry which I surveyed.7 As a result of this equation, the prerequisites for the production of a literary text which, in the eyes of critics and anthologists, adequately deals with war is a knowledge of combat. Therefore, only men who have been engaged in active combat can access this knowledge - furthermore, as Campbell observes, 'mere military status does not signify initiation', the necessary status is that of combatant.8 This exclusive identification of combat and war results in a heavy implication that allows only combatants to write war literature, because combatants are the only people who are really affected by war. Although war necessarily affects civilians in different ways from combatants, war is not an exclusively combatant, nor an exclusively masculine, experience - women's lives were affected, even destroyed, by the First World War.

Dorothy Goldman notes that women critics, as much as men, rely on combat as 'a definitional criterion' for writing First World War literature.9 She cites two examples of this: Sandra Gilbert writes that '[f]rom the first . . . World War One fostered characteristically modernist irony in young men, inducting them into "death's dream kingdom" by revealing exactly how spurious were their visions of heroism'.10 Similarly, Jean Elsthain says that 'male modernists offer the critical distancing from war and the reflective puncturing of war myths that most powerfully served to defeat the simplistic, hollow heroics characterising the Western world's plunge into the First World War'.11 For Goldman, then, women critics of First World War literature are as guilty as male critics with reference to placing emphasis on combat experience. She goes on to wonder whether it is only male prejudice which has caused women's writing on the First World War to be neglected, and suggests that there are three complementary, yet different, explanations for this neglect. The first explanation is simply the equation of writing about combat with war writing. The second explanation is the belief that it was solely the experience of combat which 'forced into existence the characteristic modernist idiom that was nurtured by the war'.12 The third explanation is that women's writing has certain characteristics which caused it to be excluded from consideration. Whilst my own reading inclines me to accept the first explanation as the likeliest, it is possible that the answer may be a combination of all three explanations.

Campbell observes that what he terms the 'trench lyric' is the 'primary type of literary text that generates th[e] ideology of combat gnosticism'; the word 'trench, in this formulation, calls attention to the poem's most common setting'.13 Thus what is generally referred to as 'war poetry' ought more accurately, in Campbell's terms, to be referred to as 'trench poetry'. This formulation, then, would allow the term 'war poetry' to apply to any poetry written in relation to the First World War, whether written by combatants or non-combatants, whether pro- or anti-war in its sentiments.

Martin Gray observes that '[t]he consolidation of critical perspectives of the poetry of the First World War as a coherent phenomenon occurred two generations after the end of the war'; this consolidation is 'mappable by means of anthologies' - the first of which were Up the Line to Death (Brian Gardner, 1964) and Men Who March Away (Ian Parsons, 1965).14 He goes on to note that during the war , classification of war poetry for contemporaneous anthologies was never in great doubt: whether the poems which were collected together were 'jingoistically pro-war' to encourage the troops and those who saw them off, or the cynically disillusioned poetry of poets such as Owen and Sassoon.15 To Gray, there is no need to problematise the category of 'war poetry'. He believes it to be 'a clear enough category, as it refers to explicit subject matter'; he seems to imply that any poetry written about the war should be categorised as war poetry, although he does say that 'by "war poets", we tend to mean "anti-war poets".' 16

The ten mainstream anthologies of the last twenty-six years which I have analysed are fairly consistent in the prominence with which poetry by combatants predominates. The anthologies surveyed were: Up the Line to Death (Brian Gardner), Men Who March Away (Ian Parsons), Poetry of the First World War (Maurice Hussey), 1914-18 in Poetry (E. L. Black), The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (Jon Silkin), Poetry of the Great War: An Anthology (Dominic Hibberd and John Onions), Never Such Innocence (Martin Stephen), War Poetry: An Introductory Reader (Simon Featherstone), Minds at War (David Roberts) and Poems of the Great War 1914-1918 (editor not listed).17 In these ten anthologies are featured two hundred and seventy-five identifiable individual poets with eight hundred and seventy-seven individual poems between them.18 Stephen's anthology includes the greatest number of poets - one hundred and thirty-two of them, whilst the Hibberd/Onions anthology features one hundred and fourteen poets. By contrast, Silkin's anthology features a mere twenty-two 'English' poets - the Penguin Book being more representative than any other anthology since Silkin includes poems in translation from 'non-English' poets such as Ungaretti and Trakl. The anthology section of Featherstone's Introductory Reader features only eleven World War One poets (but it also features poetry from World War Two).

The prominence with which the main combatant poets are featured varies from anthology to anthology, and uncertainties on the part of the anthologists about what constitutes war poetry are particularly exemplified by the inclusion or exclusion of Edward Thomas' poetry. Gardner and Black print only two of his poems, whereas Silkin prints twelve and Roberts ten. Only Featherstone does not print any poetry by Thomas, although it is considered in the 'Discussions' section of the Reader. The contrast between Thomas' place in the 'canon' and that of other combatant poets can be seen in Table 1 (Appendix 1 ).

What matters with regard to representation in the mainstream anthologies is less that it varies in this way between the poets, but what such variations signify. Anyone who reads poetry of the war at all widely realises that the war, as represented in verse, looks considerably different if women and other non-combatant poets are omitted; such omissions deprive any anthology of important aspects of how the war was registered during its timespan. Whilst the number of poets or poems included in an anthology may be affected by considerations such as the contractual length of the volume, the fact remains that decisions to exclude certain poets or types of poetry affect how the war is seen.

My survey of the anthologies revealed a number of issues. There is a 'core' of thirty-nine poems which appear in five or more of the ten anthologies (see Table 2, Appendix 1 ); of this core, only two poems appear in all ten anthologies, both of which were written by Rosenberg ('Break of Day in the Trenches' and 'Dead Man's Dump'). Two more poems appear in nine of the anthologies, both of which were written by Wilfred Owen ('Futility' and 'Strange Meeting'). The latter is interesting in the light of Campbell's assertion that the 'anthology piece of choice today is "Dulce Et Decorum Est".' 19 In fact, 'Dulce' only appears in seven of the anthologies - Hussey, Featherstone and Stephen all omit it. Owen has a total of eleven poems appearing in five or more of the anthologies surveyed, whilst Brooke, Rosenberg and Sassoon manage only four poems each in five or more anthologies. However, in terms of sheer numbers of poems included, Owen and Rosenberg are outstripped by Sassoon; Sassoon has fifty-seven poems, Owen has thirty-five and Rosenberg has twenty-six poems featured. The most anthologised poem by a non-combatant poet is Monro's 'Carrion', Part 4 of 'Youth in Arms', which appears in six anthologies.

The reason for including or excluding a poet or a particular poem is sometimes given by the editor in the preface or introduction to the anthology. Gardner, for example, after informing the reader that his anthology is 'intended as a tribute to those who fought, and died, in the First World War', explains that some poems 'such as those by E. A. Mackintosh, Robert Nichols and C. H. Sorley' are 'in danger of being relegated to the dusty shelves and, together with whizz-bangs, puttees and wire-cutters, to the memories of ageing men'.20 Gardner later notes that 'not all the well-known poems are here'; he omits Owen's 'Insensibility', Baring's 'In Memoriam A. H.', Graves' '1915', Flecker's 'The Dying Patriot', Binyon's 'Ypres' and 'For the Fallen', Church's 'Mud', Kipling's 'For All We Have and Are' and Blunden's 'Another Journey from Béthune to Cuinchy' for 'less well-known pieces'.21 It is interesting to note that of these nine poems which Gardner omits, neither Baring's, Blunden's, Church's, Flecker's nor Graves' poems are included in any of the other nine anthologies, Binyon's 'Ypres' is only included by Parsons, Kipling's is included by Hussey, Stephen and Roberts, and Binyon's 'For the Fallen' is included by Black, Hussey and Roberts. Only Owen's 'Insensibility' survived Gardner's omission and maintained its popularity - Hussey and Stephen are the only other editors to omit it. Gardner also notes four lesser-known poems which he would have included had space permitted: Carroll Carstairs' 'Death in France', Geoffrey Howard's 'The Beach Road by the Wood', D. C. McE. Osborne's 'Private Claye' and Patrick MacGill's 'After Loos'. None of these four poems has ever been included by another anthologist, and only four poems by MacGill have ever been included in any anthology - Gardner includes 'Before the Charge' and Stephen, 'Marching', 'Matey' and 'The Star-Shell'. This indicates that the choices made by previous editors can influence those of later editors, a point that is backed up by the example of Sorley. Gardner's concern for Sorley's anticipated relegation seems surprising in view of his current status as a poet who most aware of the true situation regarding the First World War - Sorley was not obviously caught up in the chivalry of the War as others were. Of course if one follows the argument that earlier anthologists influenced later ones, Sorley's lack of relegation is far from surprising, in fact it might be deemed inevitable. I shall discuss this point again later, and in more detail, in relation to Martin Stephen's anthology.

Next Page

(This essay has been written by Michèle Fry, 2000 and it is copyright.)

http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/criticalcomm1.htm