Synthesized answer
From a post-war or modern perspective, approaching an anthology like "A Treasury of War Poetry" published during the conflict [3], one might question the emphasis on certain war experiences. The anthology states an editorial policy that is "humanly hospitable rather than academically critical," especially for verses by soldiers at the Front, valuing them for their "psychological value as sincere transcripts of personal experience" [1]. This suggests a focus on the sincere, personal, and perhaps psychological impact of war, even if technical merit is sometimes slight [1]. The passages also mention that "several poems in this group which conspicuously succeed also as works of art" [1].
Conversely, the anthology might downplay aspects that are less directly tied to personal, sincere experience or artistic success. While the passages note that war can sometimes offer an "ennobling spiritual enfranchisement in the face of danger and death" and encourage the soul to "renounce the petty timidities and cautions" [4], it is not clear if this spiritual or ennobling aspect is broadly emphasized or if other, perhaps darker or more complex, facets of war are excluded. The question of what…
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
ollowing pages will attest, English and American literatures have both received genuine accessions during the Great War. With its close, the attempt to review and assemble its poetic voices becomes measurably possible. In the present Anthology the editorial policy has been humanly hospitable rather than academically critical, especially in the case of some of the verses written by soldiers at the Front, which, however slight in certain instances their technical merit may be, are yet of psychological value as sincere transcripts of personal experience, and will, it is thought, for that very…
nced, to present pretty freely the best of what has been found available in contemporary British and American war verse. It must speak for itself, and in not a few instances it does so with unusual sympathy and with living power; sometimes, too, with that quietly intimate companionableness which we find in Gray's Elegy , rightly indicated by John Masefield as a prime quality in English poetry. But if this quality appears in Chaucer and the pre-Romanticists and Wordsworth, it appears also in Longfellow and Lowell, in Emerson and Lanier, and in William Vaughn Moody; for American poetry is,…
← A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War, 1914—1919 ( 1917 ) by George Herbert Clarke CONTENTS , ACKNOWLEDGMENTS , INTRODUCTION → 171861 A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War, 1914—1919 — CONTENTS , ACKNOWLEDGMENTS , INTRODUCTION 1917 George Herbert Clarke A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR, 1914-1919 EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES , BY GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE Professor of English in the University of Tennessee HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO Copyright, 1917, by George Herbert…
ople you? What unimagined fears Possess their habitants? Does excessive pride Move them in cheerful hosts to fratricide? Beyond the eternal hope of earth, do tears Fall, as the unavengéd widow peers Into the night with prayer unsatisfied? " Gods against gods may war in agony,— Sovereignties against sovereignties disperse Their lightnings in unending enmity Of good and ill,—and they whose thoughts accurse Our world, perchance fight now vicariously For secret princes of the universe." Sometimes war will seem to the poet, despite its evils, to offer an ennobling spiritual enfranchisement in the…
legislators of the world," and he meant by legislation the guidance and determination of the verdicts of the human soul. In the collection as a whole, the receptive reader will find many suggestions, finely and sensitively expressed, touching the poetic truth (the "essential truth") of War, and the spiritual reciprocities that relate our personal lives to our national and international struggles. G. H. C. ↑ Sir Henry Newbolt: A New Study of English Poetry (Constable). ↑ Carveth Read: The Function of Relations in Thought ( The British Journal of Psychology , December, 1911). Cf. the graphic…
More questions about this book
- Given that "A Treasury of War Poetry" was published in 1917, mid-World War I, how might its dedication "To all those who have fought for freedom" and the inclusion of epigraphs celebrating honor and duty shape the reader's immediate perception of the war, and what unstated expectations might this create for the poems within?
- The detailed "Contents" organize the poems by geographical regions, specific battles, and thematic aspects like "The Wounded," "The Fallen," and "Peace." What does this organizational structure reveal about how the editor intended to portray or make sense of the multifaceted experience of World War I for his contemporary audience?
- The title "Treasury" implies value and preservation. What does the act of compiling and presenting war poetry as a "treasury" during wartime suggest about the perceived cultural or emotional function of poetry itself in times of national conflict?
- Considering the acknowledgements list various authors, publishers, and institutions, what does this network of permissions imply about the widespread engagement with and public appetite for war poetry in 1917, and how might this collective effort influence the poems selected for inclusion?