sovay | Singing they go into the dark

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.

Singing they go into the dark

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