War Poetry

More than any other conflict, the Great War inspired writers of all generations and classes, most notably among combatants. Most of the war poetry was composed before World War 2, mainly during World War 1 and the Spanish-Civil War. The war's poets are chiefly celebrated today, although much outstanding prose work was also produced by poets such as Sassoon, mainly the form of personal memoir.

Many poets of World War I were soldiers whom wrote about their experiences of war. Some of them took pride in their war and proclaimed it as "glorifying", while others had utter disapproval and hatred for it. Many of them had perished in the horrifying and dreadful war, most famously Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley. There were some survivals of war including Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon, but many had the black mark and 'curse of war' in them, together with regrets of war all reflected in their poems. Such was the attitude of many war poets.

There were lots of poems written by many war poets, be it popular ones or unknown poems, most of them were published in newspapers and then collected into anthologies. The popularity of the anthologies was on the high end when it was sold out to the public. One of the wartime anthologies was The Muse in Arms, published in 1917. There were also obvious distinction drawn between poets who were anti-war in attitude and those who wrote more traditional war poetry.