Not About Heroes

[SiegeGunner]

I was going to stand back from this, as I thought it was only a minor point that did not merit being laboured — but I had overlooked the fact that this essay is part of Katie's university submission.

Katie, I'm not a poet, or a teacher, or an academic, I'm a translator, an old-fashioned practical language-mechanic, and I've spent 30+ years reading texts and trying to figure out what authors mean or are trying to say. The line that ends in 'hollo' is the first of the final four in which the subject of the poem is shaken from his early reverie, lifted over the morbid thoughts of the middle section, and galvanised into decision and action — hence each of the last four lines ending in a verb.

The verb 'hollo' is indeed related to the American word 'holler' (which is probably British English originally). At its most basic, it describes a projection of sound with an above-average expenditure of effort — declaiming, if you will. Like shouting, yodelling, ringing out ... In short, exactly the kind of word you would want to describe the sound of a bugle reverberating through the 'idle hills' and stirring the listener to rise to the occasion.

Wishing you the very best of luck with your interview. Don't dwell on this point unless someone raises it — but if they do, take the opportunity to explain how you've reviewed your original thoughts in the light of discussion.

Best wishes

Mick

[Dragon]

I Don't dwell on this point unless someone raises it — but if they do, take the opportunity to explain how you've reviewed your original thoughts in the light of discussion.

I was going to say the same thing.

I think you may need to make it clear that you're aware that 'A Shropshire Lad' was published in 1896; you wouldn't want to give the impresssion that you think 'On the idle hill' was a Great War poem. ['Scarlet' refs to uniforms]

Re the piece that begins 'In that I loved you...', I think it might be worth thinking about why Owen uses sonnet form.

Which is your college of preference, or is it an open application? (If they're putting you up in university accommodation, be prepared for the fact that sixteenth century bedrooms can be chilly! Take your bed-socks and a Harris Tweed nightie with a button-up neck. )

Gwyn

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

English British origin like so much of the curious mixture that is the American dialogue. Indeed, I have heard there are certain communities in the Appalachian mountains that still use what we would term obsolete language, like thee and thou and verily! I appreciate the explanation, Mick, and academic or not, I envy your career; as someone who loves language for its own sake, it sounds idyllic!

Gwyn, in fact I addressed the point in the introduction of my essay that the poem was written in 1896!! (Perhaps fortunately - I came oh so close to falling in the trap of thinking it was a Great War poem - it was the line about bleached bones and forgotten fields that did it I think). I can show you a copy of the essay if you are interested - but at the same time, I won't be offended if you are not!! The College is Brasenose, onetime home of William Golding and General Haig (apt, perhaps!) and yes, I fear I might be staying in accomodation with a far from perpendicular floor. However, this won't be the first time, as on the open day, I spent two nights at Queen's College - I rather relished feeling like someone out of Brideshead Revisited as I sat on the broad windowsill of the Georgian window overlooking a garden enclosed by stone walls covered in creeper!

Why does Wilfred use sonnet form? I could give many answers, probably each as incorrect as the next (then again, is there really an incorrect answer?) I would tentatively suggest the sonnet format in some ways resembles a prayer. The Lord's Prayer itself is written in iambs - and somehow, the way they are brought to a clear culmination in the closing two lines seems like the conclusion, the Amen, if you like. This could reflect the influences of Evangelical religion that Wilfred never really succeeded in disentangling himself from, and in the end ceased to struggle. Also, that particular sonnet has a religious feel to it, or obvious reasons - it is a paradox, a dismissal of religion in favour of Wilfred's preferred ideals. Perhaps another reason might be that the sonnet, being inextricably linked with Shakespeare, offers some comfort and solidarity to Wilfred at times when he is exploring new ideas that will challenge, essentially, all that he has been brought up to believe, in much the same way as I myself find 'To Eros' radical, shocking and an assault on many principles that have become estabished in my life!

Yet Wilfred was a man of traditions: he did imitate other writers he admired, (a certain John Keats springs to mind!) he probably found a mode of writing that had been used by so many previous generations of writers quite an apt gesture on his part...I don't know. To me sonnets suggest orderliness, something Wilfred was striving to find in his own life, and in his own poetic voice.

[Dragon]

'Orderliness' .... yes, I agree that may be relevant. I don't like 'To Eros', I don't know much about it, and I find it rather abstruse, so I won't comment on it. I don't know enough about Owen to be able to say conclusively why he used particular forms. One point about using sonnet form is that it forces the poet to contain his profound or powerful emotions in a very structured, fourteen line poem with pre-determined rhyme scheme and metre. In this poem, he's putting forward two deeply felt tensions in his life (love and Christianity) and coming to a conclusion in the final couplet, which seems to me to fit in with the original title he used ('The End').

This is a Shakespearian sonnet, in case you don't know. Three quatrains and a couplet. To see how using sonnet form affects a poet's work and thinking, it's an interesting exercise to try to write a sonnet of one's own, using this form and the Petrarchan form.

I'm not sure why you say that the Lord's Prayer is written in iambi; my understanding is that the metrical pattern of an iambus is unstressed-stressed in each metrical foot. To stare upon the ash of all i burned

As an aside, the turning against religion is starkly and horrifyingly expressed in a painting by Otto Dix (war artist) called 'Verspottung Christi', painted in 1948, in which people who have been through war put out their tongues and spit at the desolate figure of Jesus. It seems the ultimate and anarchic expression of those who feel betrayed and is one of the most intense and haunting paintings I've ever seen. Compared with something like this, Owen's sonnet seems to me almost shallow.

Gwyn

PS American dialogue - do you mean dialogue or dialect? And it's British English, not English British! I realise that sounds pedantic but ......

[Dragon]

PS again

If you go into the English Faculty, spare a thought for the demolished drill hall which occupied the site before. (Originally there was a racquet court and skating rink there.)

Gwyn

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

It's beautiful! (The drill hall/English Faculty, I mean - of course I shall remember, and pass it on to anyone who is with me at the time, and the thought of attending lectures there each week!) And yes, I'd agree with you about how sonnets are intense contained emotion, and yes, I think this is indeed in keeping with Wilfred's character. I mean, in some senses it's using one's soul for artistic purposes, so I suppose in a sense the writing of it serves as a means of detaching oneself and almost distancing oneself for one's own body and thought processes. Wilfred had to do that, because, I remember reading in one of Sassoon's autobiographical works that he occasionally found his fellow poet frighteningly intense, when he became over maudlin, or was particularly affected by a poem of his. He was a bit like John Keats: a supersensitive soul not designed for exposure to the world!! (by the way, please don't take that comment at face value!!)

Yes, I was aware that Shakespeare's most common mode was a petrachan sonnet, with vaguley the rhyming pattern illustrated below, I believe:

LXXI

1. No longer mourn for me when I am dead A

2. Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell B

3. Give warning to the world that I am fled A

4. From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: B

5. Nay, if you read this line, remember not C

6. The hand that writ it, for I love you so, D

7. That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, C

8. If thinking on me then should make you woe. D

............................................................................

9. O! if, I say, you look upon this verse, E

10. When I perhaps compounded am with clay, F

11. Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; E

12. But let your love even with my life decay; F

13. Lest the wise world should look into your moan, G

14. And mock you with me after I am gone. G

I am also aware that usually, the first eight lines of a sonnet take one tone, and in the culminating six lines, there is usually an alteration in this tone. Wilfred often, as in To Eros (although he chooses to divide his first section into two stanzas) illustrates this by detaching the first eight lines from the final six. I personally am unsure about 'To Eros' - of course, it comes from a stage in his career that is now generally dismissed as being his stage of imitation, his stage of pretentiousness before the war helped him to find his own voice. I cannot, however, regard it as shallow, simply because when I first read it, I felt it had a sort of compelling power over me - it was almost as though it was tempting me.

P.S. Pedantic? Extremely... ... but I'm sure it's for the greater good.

[Dragon]

Sorry, Katie, but if you're going to mention sonnets, you need to know that the form

abab cdcd efef gg

is a Shakespearian sonnet (or an English sonnet). It contains three quatrains [4 lines] and a couplet [2].

and a Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave and a sestet [8 then 6]:

abbaabba then some combination of c d and possibly e, eg cdecde or cdcdcd.

They're not the same. It matters to people who know about these things. And it isn't 'vaguely..'! It is. If you're not sure, just call them sonnets.

I think your reasoning about the nature of the poem makes sense. The comments of other poets are often quite revealing; I can imagine that SS found WO alarmingly intense; he isn't my idea of a fun companion to go down to the pub with, either. I rather like the drawing I've seen of a large dinner party in 18-something, with all the guests fast asleep at the table, heads in soup plates or whatever, while Coleridge talks on...... and on...... and on...... and

I do hope you don't end up on a perpendicular floor tonight / tomorrow. Unless you're a bat.......

Gwyn

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

I knew that really, I just doubted myself. And I knew the term was 'petrachan'.

[Dragon]

Try not to. They're looking for potential as well as ability.

I think most of us know the feeling of drying up, mind going blank, or losing confidence when stressed, or being put on the spot.

I'm sorry that I can't help with your original question, and nor am I much help on Owen. I don't really like him very much, I'm afraid, and I'm irritated that he and his friend seem to have become the official voices of the war when there were other, in my view more talented individuals than Owen producing effective, poignant, creatively exciting work. David Jones leads on my list and so does Rosenberg. I'm not denying Owen's powers, or Sassoon's; I suppose I'm rather tired of him. Which is about me and not the poet, really.

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

I think the problem with Owen is that he is forced on so many students at an age when, really, a few para-rhyme verses about a war that was fought ninety years ago are the last thing they want to be thinking about! I am fortunante in that I found something in the poetry I could love, and you might say that directly led me to join the forum.

[Crunchy]

Hi Katie,

Tried to PM you but your in box is full - How did your interview go?

Cheers

chris

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

Sorry! The messages must have been coming in thick and fast while I was away! Interview... erm... To be perfectly honest, I think they'd have gone along with me if I'd said Milton's Paradise Lost was about white fluffy rabbits. In other words, impossible to tell when I have no measure of their criteria. With hindsight, I said some pretty idiotic things, but there were also one or two responses I was really proud of. In the first interview I was so nervous I couldn't say a single word without stammering, and I certainly didn't do Wilfred Owen justice. I identified two phases in his career, one culminating in 'To Eros' where Wilfred refers to having sacrificed Christ, thus discarding religion in favour of love and sensuality, the other with 'Greater Love', where amoruous love was dismissed in favour of sacrificial. I also mentioned sonnets. The texts I was given included a metaphysical poem called 'The Collar', and an extract from Herny IV.

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

Btw - apologies, I know this isn't really relevant to the thread - but I got in!!! (Grades permitting, of course)

[Crunchy]

Heartiest congratulations. Well done.

[Dragon]

Brilliant news for you, Katie, after a tense Christmas, I bet.

I suggest you make a separate post in Skindles; other people will want to know.

Gwyn

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

Thanks Gwyn, thanks Chris. I will make a separate post on skindles then... I wasn't sure whether to or not, because I was afraid it might look like I was bragging.