Poetry magazine has just posted more female poets of the First World War than I have so far seen in one place together. They're not helpfully linked all together, but you can find them with their male compatriots—all English-language—here. I was especially struck by Katharine Tynan's "Joining the Colours," Mary Wedderburn Cannan's "August 1914," Florence Ripley Mastin's "At the Movies," Mary Borden's "The Song of the Mud," Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "War Mothers," and Jessie St. John's "A War Bride." They have Margaret Postgate Cole's "The Falling Leaves," but not "Afterwards," which I find more devastating. I wish they had more Borden: she ran field hospitals on the front lines of Belgium and France and "At the Somme" is worth reading entire. Charlotte Mew has the best author photograph. (Poetry correctly links "The Cenotaph," but I'm lingering over "Not for That City" and "Rooms," which are not war poems, just very good ones.) There are other women, too. And men, but I knew most of their names.
Links
Page Summary
Active Entries
- 1: But the soft and lovely silvers are now falling on my shoulder
- 2: What does it do when we're asleep?
- 3: Now where did you get that from, John le Carré?
- 4: Put your circuits in the sea
- 5: Sure as the morning light when frigid love and fallen doves take flight
- 6: No one who can stand staying landlocked for longer than a month at most
- 7: And in the end they might even thank me with a garden in my name
- 8: I'd marry her this minute if she only would agree
- 9: And me? Well, I'm just the narrator
- 10: And how it gets you home safe and then messes the house up
Style Credit
- Style: Classic for Refried Tablet by and
Expand Cut Tags
No cut tags