“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” Owen asked in his “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” For Egremont, the poems serve...
Poetry reveals the devastating trajectory of war.
On the centennial anniversary of the start of World War I, historian Egremont (Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia, 2011, etc.) considers the intersecting lives and work of 11 British poets who were soldiers and esteemed contributors to the burgeoning genre of war poetry. Many of the author’s subjects are likely to be familiar to readers, including Rupert Brooke, Charles Sorley, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves; others, such as Edmund Blunden and Julian Grenfell, are lesser known today. During the war, Egremont writes, “the poets began to be lionized,” invited to give readings in elite salons and sought by publishers. Six chapters focus on each year of war and its aftermath, offering an adroit biographical and historical overview, followed by a selection of poems that chronicle the writers’ spirits, as they changed “from enthusiasm to pitiful weariness,” from hope to disillusion. “Cast away regret and rue,” Charles Sorley wrote in 1914. “Think what you are marching to.” By January 1915, his letter to a friend revealed a deepening sense of dismay: “We don’t seem to be winning, do we? It looks like an affair of years.” A few months later, he began a poem with lines that could have served as his epitaph: “Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat: / Only an empty pail….” In October, aged 20, he was killed by a sniper. Owen, held in high regard by Sassoon, was killed, age 25, in 1918; Brooke, Thomas and Grenfell were already dead. Those who survived—e.g., Sassoon and Graves—“couldn’t leave the war, even if…they wanted to move on.”
“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” Owen asked in his “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” For Egremont, the poems serve as “holy glimmers” of lives lost and as powerful protests against the hell of war.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-28032-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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