Tag Archives: "Anthem for Doomed Youth"

A War Hero Who Derided Memorials

World War I poet Sassoon lambasts those who think that war memorials pay off the debt to those who gave their lives.

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Vets in WWI Documentary Do Not Age

Tuesday Last night Julia and I watched Peter Jackson’s extraordinary documentary about World War I in which he applied filmmaker’s magic to archival footage to create a sense of immediacy. By brightening dark shots and darkening overexposed ones, erasing scratches, evening out movement (World War I film was shot with hand-cranked cameras), turning long-shots into […]

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Memorial Day: Anthem for Doomed Youth

With Memorial Day, there is the danger that we will romanticize the deaths of the fallen rather than face up to the full tragedy. This tension can be seen in a number of World War I poems, some of which romanticize the fallen while others dwell on the absurdity of their deaths.

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Poetry Changed during World War I

The horrors of World War I created some great poetry. But not in its early days.

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