As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner-In Flanders Fields: And Other Poems Of The First World War
In say 1912, 1913,
hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war
clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed
their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing
business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists,
Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the
Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the
disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint,
sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that
building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems;
writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish
theory of progress, humankind had moved
beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would
put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins;
writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo
love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and
woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by
crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens
strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of
delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of
the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those
constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack
of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the
hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads
down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who
did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their
blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums
they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist,
Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes,
words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.
And then the war
drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out
their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets,
beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed
leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams,
and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove
through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man
blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like
Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation
leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands
as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown
grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused
about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry
out against the hatred night, and like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful
old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into
imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong. Jesus what a
blasted nigh that Great War time was.
And do not forget
when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and
buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of
ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and
not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands
for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913,
hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war
clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed
their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing
business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists,
Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the
Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the
disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint,
sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that
building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems;
writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish
theory of progress, humankind had moved
beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would
put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins;
writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo
love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and
woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by
crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens
strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of
delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of
the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those
constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack
of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the
hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads
down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who
did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their
blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums
they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist,
Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes,
words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.
And then the war
drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out
their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets,
beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed
leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams,
and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove
through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man
blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like
Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation
leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands
as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown
grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused
about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry
out against the hatred night, and like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful
old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into
imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong. Jesus what a
blasted nigh that Great War time was.
And do not forget
when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and
buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of
ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and
not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands
for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
In Flanders Fields: And Other Poems Of The First World War
by Brian Busby
In this collection of war poetry, Brian Busby has selected works from the poets killed in action during the First World War, starting with Rupert Brooke in 1915 and ending with Wilfred Owen who died only seven days before the end of the conflict.
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