Parson's anthology appeared the year after Gardner's, and in the Introduction he notes four poems which he has included, but considers to be less well-known: Aldington's 'Soliloquy II', Gurney's ''To His Love', Harvey's 'Prisoners' and Sidgwick's 'Vision'. Of these four, the latter two remain little known since no other editor includes them; the former two are slightly better known as both Hussey and Roberts chose to include the Aldington, whilst Black, Silkin and the unnamed editor of the Penguin 80th anniversary anthology include the Gurney. Harvey remains largely ignored by anthology editors (see Table 1, Appendix 1 ); none of his poems have been included in any anthology published since the 1960s. Sidgwick fares even more badly since Parsons is the only editor since 1960 to include any of his poems. Parsons claims to have 'tried to make a representative selection' of poems by both combatants and non-combatants, and in fact he does include a 'small but significant number' of poems by older poets such as Chesterton, Hardy, de la Mare and Yeats, as well as poems by Lawrence, Fredegond Shove and Charlotte Mew.22

Hussey, in discussing what has been included in or excluded from Poetry of the First World War, says that Yeats' 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' 'is not included in this volume since its place is elsewhere'.23 He observes that he would have included more of Graves' poetry 'if he had not preferred to suppress most of his early poetry and refuse permission for its reprinting'.24 This explains why Graves has only thirty-five poems included in the ten anthologies surveyed; until Graves' death in 1985, editors were largely refused permission to include his poetry in their anthologies, thus only Roberts and Hibberd and Onions are able to print more than two or three (see Table 1, Appendix 1).

Two civilian poets whose poetry Hussey chose to include are Binyon and Hardy. Hussey observes that Binyon's 'For the Fallen' tends to be associated with the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph, 'although it was written much earlier'.25 Hussey includes three of Hardy's poems: 'Before Marching and After' - which is not included in any other anthology, 'Channel Firing' - which Silkin and the unnamed editor of the Penguin 80th anniversary anthology also includes, and the poem Hussey describes as 'the finest of all [Hardy's] comments on war': 'And there was a great calm' - which is also included by Roberts and Hibberd and Onions.26

Black includes poetry 'written about the First World War, whether it was written during the war or so much later, and whether it was written by soldiers or civilians'.27 Of the civilians who wrote at the time of the war or later, Black includes Binyon, Housman, Gibson, Kipling, Chesterton, Hardy, Service, Dyment and Hughes.28

Silkin says in his introduction that to 'account for one's choice will perhaps seem like self-pleading, but such accounting may also be taken as an outlining of the principles by which the poets were chosen'.29 Silkin is one of the few editors to have placed his emphasis on the term 'Poetry' rather than 'First World War' in making his selections; as he admits: 'the barest historical requirement was that the poetry should have been to do with the war, and have been written by those who lived in, or through, the period. Nothing more seemed needed.' 30 Silkin states that in the end the overriding influence on his choices was 'excellence, not the representation of intrinsic concerns' so that he chose 'what [he] thought was good'; if he 'thought the poem good it was included', otherwise it was excluded.31

Silkin notes that there 'aren't a large number of different poets in the anthology, but there are greatly different poetries'.32 However, of the English poets included by Silkin, there are eighteen poems by Owen, seventeen by Rosenberg, twelve each by Blunden and Thomas, and ten by Sassoon; as Silkin himself observes 'the more poems there are by a poet the more highly [he] think[s] of him (translated works excepted).' 33 The fact that Silkin says 'him' in that sentence is both deliberate and significant - although Silkin includes poems by May Wedderburn Cannan, Margaret Postgate Cole, Mina Loy, Charlotte Mew, Alice Meynell and Edna St Vincent Millay, Margaret Postgate Cole is represented by only two poems, and the others by one poem each. Silkin also includes the whole of Read's 'The End of a War', which he considers has been underrated. Hardy's 'very fine' 'Channel Firing' has been included, but not his recruiting poem, 'Men Who March Away'.34 Silkin excludes Asquith, but includes two Brooke poems. He also includes Manning's 'Grotesque' and eight poems by Kipling - more than any other editor.35 The choice of Manning is unusual since he was not an officer, and the stereotypical war poet, as exemplified in anthologies, is a middle-class officer.

Discussing individual poems he includes, Silkin points out that 'there are certain poems that have embedded themselves in our consciousness - such as Brooke's "If I should die" and Julian Grenfell's "Into Battle".' 36 Of the latter, Silkin observes that he includes it 'because the editor wished to offer a sample of "famous" poems without which no anthology of First World War poetry would even try to claim that it fully responded to the war'; interestingly, Silkin does not offer a list of which 'famous' poems an editor should, in his opinion, include; however, he adds that Grenfell's 'Into Battle', McCrae's 'In Flanders Fields', Seegar's 'Rendezvous', Sorley's 'All the Hills and Vales Along' and Owen's 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' do 'fit the case'.37 Finally, Silkin states that his anthology tries to offer 'mostly what the editor prefers and a little of what he believes other people, a great many other people, have liked, even loved, as they responded to the horror and pity of war'; thus Silkin's choices are largely based on personal preference, as are so many editors' choices.38

In the introduction to their anthology, Hibberd and Onions observe that only a small number of poets, 'of whom Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen are probably the most familiar', have become valued as, to use Donald Davie's words, 'first-hand and faithful witnesses to a moment in national destiny'.39 The fact that only a few poets are accepted as 'witnesses' whilst hundreds more are forgotten is, say Hibberd and Onions, the 'result of a long selection process in which anthologies have played some part.' 40 Since 1914 anthologies have both influenced, and been influenced by, contemporary attitudes to the war. Hibberd and Onions claim that the choice of materials made by editors 'has often not been made solely on the grounds of excellence or imaginative power, as is evident from some of their introductions.' 41 In fact, the choice of most editors tends to be made on the grounds of history, as is made clear by their introductions.

According to Hibberd and Onions, the success of modern anthologies is part of the reason for the wide establishment of the idea that 'the war was a journey from innocence to protest'.42 They note that most anthologies of Great War poetry 'have been designed to reinforce one view or another of the war'; they appear to believe this is not a good thing, but it seems inevitable that anthologies will promote only one view of the war, and that view will be the one the editor holds most dear.43 The only real way to avoid this is if several people edit an anthology together. Hibberd and Onions go on to say that most modern anthologies, particularly Gardner's, Parsons', Hussey's and Black's, make use of 'the myth that ruthless profiteers and generals pursue[d] a game for their own ends while the common soldier suffer[ed] helplessly as exploited victim.' 44

Hibberd and Onions explain that their choice of poems is

based on [their] general aim, which has been to provide a readable and reliable picture of poetry by British writers composed during or soon after the Great War, showing how poets and poetry responded to the crisis and how some dominant themes were explored.45

They continue by noting that they have 'omitted one or two familiar pieces which have received enough attention' whilst including some pieces that, purely on literary grounds, do not merit inclusion, although they do not explain why such pieces have been included.46 Poetry by airmen, sailors, prisoners and men at the 'sideshows' of the war have been excluded, as has the work of non-British poets, and poetry written many years after the war 'in order to keep the book to a reasonable size'.47 Hibberd and Onions say that if their overriding criterion had been excellence, as Silkin's is, they would have included fewer poets and, of those included, several would have been represented by more poems, but their 'aim required a wide spread of poets and of comment on immediate experience'.48 As a result of this aim, neither Blunden nor Thomas are strongly represented: Blunden because he 'wrote in retrospect', and Thomas because he 'seldom wrote directly about the war', this in spite of the fact that the war impinged on all Thomas' poetry.49

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

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