This week’s choices include poems written by combatants on both sides of the devastating World War I. Some are certainly more famous than others.
From the heroic mediations of Brooke’s The Soldier to Trakl’s apocalyptic ruminations in his On the Eastern Front, each piece expresses a distinct experience of that era-defining war. The poems’ stylistic variety and consistent originality reveal the tragic circumstances that consumed a brilliantly trained generation of artistically inclined young men.
