For Remembrance Day
Keith Douglas has recently been 'rediscovered' by a new generation interested in the poetry of war. Born in 1920, Keith's father had fought in the First World War and after only a year at university Keith decided he wanted to follow in his fathers footsteps and he joined the cavalry, his love of horses being a deciding factor, unfortunately, like the rest of the cavalry, he actually trained in tanks. He started writing poetry in his teens.
Injured by a landmine during fighting in Egypt he was taken to a hospital in what was then Palestine and took the opportunity to write poems while he recovered, and then went back to active service. He was killed during the Allied invasion of Normandy. He was only 24 years old.
Some people have said that he would have been one of the century's greatest poets if he had lived. Keith Douglas himself said that most of the poetry of the war would be written only after it was over, whether by soldiers or civilians. He knew that this war had involved civilians to a much greater extent than ever before, though he did not know that an estimated 27 million civilians would be killed by the end of the war - double the number of soldiers killed.
Keith Douglas has recently been 'rediscovered' by a new generation interested in the poetry of war. Born in 1920, Keith's father had fought in the First World War and after only a year at university Keith decided he wanted to follow in his fathers footsteps and he joined the cavalry, his love of horses being a deciding factor, unfortunately, like the rest of the cavalry, he actually trained in tanks. He started writing poetry in his teens.
Injured by a landmine during fighting in Egypt he was taken to a hospital in what was then Palestine and took the opportunity to write poems while he recovered, and then went back to active service. He was killed during the Allied invasion of Normandy. He was only 24 years old.
Some people have said that he would have been one of the century's greatest poets if he had lived. Keith Douglas himself said that most of the poetry of the war would be written only after it was over, whether by soldiers or civilians. He knew that this war had involved civilians to a much greater extent than ever before, though he did not know that an estimated 27 million civilians would be killed by the end of the war - double the number of soldiers killed.
The poem 'How To Kill' requires more than just one read through to pick-up on the meanings, nuances and clever use of language which are used to convey what is the most base human act, that of killing another human. The introduction of the mosquito which then becomes a metaphor for the bullet which kills his enemy is, in my humble opinion, quite brilliant.
How to Kill by Keith Douglas
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
Now. Death, like a familiar, hears
and look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the waves of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
The weightless mosquito touches
Her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.
2 comments:
I presume the time of your post was quite deliberate. 11:11 am on 11/11. Maybe not but nice one if it was.
The thing re war poetry is that what we now have will probably never be repeated. WW2 and more so WW1 'created' many brilliant poets but now war is faster, even "in the trenches" communication is constant - and mostly electronic - and to top it all people don't write any more! Now I know some do but I think my generalisation is still valid. It is such a shame but a reason to treasure those poets - known and not so well known - that became what they were through extreme experience of war and death.
The timing was deliberate. I think you are right about communication, the funny thing is, blogs aside, the parts of our lives that have been enriched by the Internet are excatly the same aspects that benefitted from the printed media growing or the expansion of telephone useage. Poetry and folk music aren't any more popular because of the Internet for example.
Post a Comment