The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry - Various Kartoniert (TB)

Klasse!

A disclaimer: I am a novice concerning poetry and still have much to learn of the Great War.This volume is a real gem. The poems are ordered to walk you through the experiences of soldiers chronologically, from the recruitment, the arrival in France, the battles, returning home and finally the end of the war. The poems given are incredibly diverse such that one is subjected to the whole range of sentiments, from war mania all the way to a morbid sort of depression. An added bonus is the concise but illuminating introduction that helps the less knowledgeable of us to understand what is being presented.On the whole and absolutely recommendable purchase!

At a quick glance this seems to be a very good and comprehensive anthology, just what I would like to use with my students for a class on First World War Poetry. On closer inspection, though, it reveals itself to be fairly user-unfriendly. I have no objection to the poems being arranged by topic rather than by author: in fact I quite welcome it. However the volume has the following editorial defects:- The contents page gives only the topics, not the individual poems.- There is an alphabetical index of poems giving page numbers, but not one of poets! There are biographical notes on the poets, arranged alphabetically. It would have cost little work and very little ink to add the page numbers on which their respective poems are to be found so that this section could also function as an index.- There are apparently quite useful notes on the poems at the back, but the only way to find the notes on a particular poem is to leaf your way through the notes, as there is no cross-referencing system either by page numbers or poem numbers. (The pages are of course numbered, but the poems are not – this is not a defect in itself, but it could have been done to help us find the notes.)Sometimes I wonder whether the people who publish books also read them or work with them. I shall look for another anthology for my class.