Danielle's WWI Poetry Blog

My final paper analyzes poems in which the poet addresses the dead. I wanted to discover what purpose poets had in showing the living speaking to the dead through poetry. I utilized the poems “Haunted,” by Robert Graves, “Strange Meeting,” by Wilfred Owen, “When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead” by Charles Hamilton Sorley, and Youth in Arms IV: Carrion. Thanks to helpful comments on my last blog and from Dr. Ruzich, I came to the realization that communicating with the dead during WWI could also be seen in the rise of spiritualism. This contributed to the evidence that many had a need to speak to those they had lost during the war. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge were both advocates for spiritualism. Lodge said that he was able to “communicate with his son, Raymond, who was killed in Ypres in 1915.” He said that Raymond lived in a place called “Summerland” and enjoyed “a life without the cares those on Earth experienced.”        ...

  Topic: Poems that address the dead or show the dead speaking to the living Question: Do the poets address the dead and show the dead speaking strictly to show the poet's guilt over the deaths of his fellow soldiers and the fact that the poet himself is still alive?           I want to look at poems that depict the dead as judging the living, but I also wanted to analyze poems to attempt to understand if the dead being addressed and personified in poems is used strictly to cause the living to feel guilt over the fact that they are still alive. The poems that I want to analyze are “Haunted” by Robert Graves, “Trench Poets” by Edgell Rickword, “Armistice Day, 1921” by Edward Shanks, and “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae. People tried to communicate with their dead loved ones during WWI and I would like to evaluate the purpose of giving a voice to the dead and directly speaking to them in war poetry. What I need help with:  I’m having trouble th...