The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen (New Directions Book)

Long forgotten war. New perspective on old feelings.

Everybody needs to read the poetry of Wilfred Owen. I've never read such forward prose on the atrocities of war.

I tell everyone if it's possible to have a crush on a long gone WWI soldier and poet, I have done it. I love these poems. Owen's skill and heart shine through. I am moved each time I read my favorites and amazed at his talent. Current world events could be weighed in a better totality with a reading of these poems and Owen's distaste for war and realistic depiction of its costs. Every time I hear a politician mention the distancing phrase "boots on the ground" I think of Owen and how he can tell them a thing or two about the souls who actually fill those boots.

At last, a good edition of Owen's poems! This one has a table of contents that works properly, and the poems are sensibly formatted. It is a pleasure to use and includes all Owen's best-known poems. I'd have given five stars except that, curiously, Owen's preface to his work is mis-formatted so that it is laid out like a poem instead of prose. But this is only a minor niggle (though perhaps one that can be fixed in a future edition?)

Spellbinding and ghostly. Owen's s words are a perfect counterweight to amateur historians like myself who sometimes can become immersed in the political situations and logistical environment to remember that these were young men, of an astonishingly unlucky generation, living in the most horrific circumstances, and finding a desire within to expound on the terror, squalor, and sheer sublimity of coping with such insanity. It reminds the reader as the hundredth anniversary of the conflict that humanity was present in the past, that they suffered what we cannot imagine. Is that not what purpose poetry serves?

Owen's work was featured as The Poetry Foundation's Poem of the Day and I immediately sought out the book. I was so intrigued that I also picked up "The Poetry Of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma And Healing In Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney And Siegfried Sassoon" by Daniel Hipp. Both are fascinating reads, and give great insight into the mind of a soldier.

This was a horrible war and its largely forgotten today. That anybody could think of writing poetry while having German machine gun bullets, shells and mustard or chlorine gas as part of your daily routine is beyond understanding. "Dulce et Decorum Est" should be required memorization in school for anybody who speaks English. This was 100 years ago. Humanity as a race has advanced little if at all in that time.

The poems the young Englishman Wilfred Owen wrote stuck in the miserable trenches of WWI, before he was killed shortly before the armistice, give us a you-are-there feel of the pity & the horror. This is how a whole generation disappeared. Strong, original language, not the flowery, heroic stuff of the time.

Long having been acquainted with the incredibly moving work of Wilfred Owen, I bought this value for money collection of his works for my new Kindle.I had read the former review of July 2012 which stated there was an error, by omission, of a whole line from Strange Meeting. Since this feedback was relayed 8 months ago, I had felt sure that the authors would have been quite capable of amending this digital file to the satisfaction of all, but no. A real shame as Strange Meeting is really one of his finest works and to leave out entire lines from a poem, murders it in a small way. I had thought that feedback via Amazon was taken seriously by producers of Kindle products, but it seems I was wrong. In that case.... why am I writing this??? 3 out of 5 - as it is a joy to read the correct versions of the poetry included for such a good price - lost 2 stars though, for the original mistake and then having ignored the 'heads up' given from its readers.

Owens ability to evoke the human condition in a brutal war is timeless. The poems fill the imagination with colour, smoke and tears and can take the reader to places beyond the reach of modern media. Lovers of deep seated poetry and those interested in the sacrifices made in two world wars from a historical perspective will be fascinated by this collection of Owens work.

I studied Wilfred Owen's poems in Sixth Form 40 years ago and now having reread them and in the centennial year of the First World War, it is now that I can appreciate the emotions and feelings that he is trying to put over to his readers.I wonder what sort of advocate he would have been in the post war period if he had survived the war?

While it is good to have Owen on the Kindle, this edition does suffer the proofreading problems that so often bedevil publications for Kindle. For example, in "Strange Meeting" the line, "By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell." is simply omitted.

There appear to he a number of poems not included.For instance, On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought into Action is not included.I've not identified any more so far.